Re: BonoboPreview initiative - png in a control

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Mon, 2001-12-10 at 15:08, Jens Finke wrote:
> On 10 Dec 2001, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > hmm, sorry to disagree, but is it really right to use a thumbnail for
> > previewing all kind of files? I mean, there are a lot of files whose
> > preview would be a lot difficult to generate as a thumbnail.
> >
> > What would a program be supposed to do to generate that? Get a
> > screenshot of itself and save it to a file? How would I generate a
> > thumbnail of a, for instance, gnumeric spreadsheet?
> 
> Well, your point is to use a BonoboControl for displaying all this. Let's
> assume you have a dir with 30 different files in it. I don't believe it's
> very efficient to start multiple controls to create a preview for all the
> different file types.
> 
my point is not to use BonoboControl because I want to, but because it
seems the best solution, IMO. Of course, having lots of controls at the
same time could be bad, unless those controls are made really
lightweight.
If there's a better solution than using BonoboControl, it's fine for me.
But I don't think the thumbnail idea is a good idea for non-image files.

> My idea is to define a standard way of storing such previews on the
> filesystem level. If we provide some helper functions for managing these
> an application can create a preview image together with the original file
> during saving. Then write a bonobo control which reads the thumbnails from
> the filesystem level.
> 
and force all apps to generate the preview for all the files it saves?
It seems to me a lot of wasted disk space

> At least the Gimp developers consider these mechanism too. And it's also
> open for non-Bonobo applications.
> 
the thumbnail idea makes a lot of sense for image files, I agree
completely with you, but what about other kind of files? For instance, I
may want to have a .oaf file preview, which just shows a list of the
components defined in the file, and not the XML itself. How would I
generate a thumbnail for that?

cheers
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> - <rodrigo ximian com>
http://www.gnome-db.org/ - http://www.ximian.com/