Re: Nautilus 2.6 - We're going all spatial

[Mario Vukelic <mario vukelic dantian org>]

On Mit, 2003-09-17 at 13:27, Julien Olivier wrote:

> I agree. And I think it would be very useful to have a tree view in a
> always-accessible place like the panel and/or the context menu.

I think having a tree view available from a panel applet in addition to
a purely spatial nautilus is an idea worth considering. There once was s
fs tree panel applet for Gnome 1.4 IIRC, but at the moment I can't find
it on Google. Basically, it was a panel applet that dropped down a fs
tree view if you clicked on it. I don't think it was very tied in with
nautilus, which IIRC was it's major weakness

A tree panel applet that makes sense in the context of a spatial
nautilus should have the following properties:

* Hierarchies can be either explicitly included or excluded (design
decision or preference, I have no idea). Even if the user wants to be
able to browse the fs, he does not always need to see everything under a
parent, but only some parts
* Several tree roots can be specified. Can be either done by combining
them in one applet, or by defining one root per applet, in which case
the user can add more than one applet to the panel to be able to staret
the browsing from several locations (/, /usr, /usr/local, /etc, /var,
/home)
* Probably only folders shall be shown in the tree, maybe files as an
option (but that would make the tree very long, making it unwieldy)
* Clicking a folder in the tree view opens a "normal" spatial nautilus
window
* The applet should tie in very much with nautilus, or rather be really
a part of it, functionally. E.g., it may be convenient to have a means
to return to the folder in the tree view (i.e., opening the tree again
at the folder location) if some action is triggered in the spatial
nautilus window. This action should probably only be even available in
the nautilus window when the applet is running. Mouse gestures come to
mind (only half joking)
* As the whole thing is targeted to power users, it can/should be very
configurable

Such a thing would enable nautilus to be completely spatial without any
compromises and still provide a tree view. The tree view would be taken
out of the single nautilus windows, thus using less screen space than a
side pane in every window that is in browser mode. It would enforce a
very strong conceptual border between nautilus in spatial mode and
nautilus in browser mode, but it would keep strong functional
relationship . It may even extend some advantages of the spatial model
to browsing, since the tree will always be in the same location of the
desktop: motor memory

Is this very stupid?