Re: [Nautilus-list] Integration of gmc and nautilus desktop directories.

[dirk vangestel philips com]

I liked the Amiga solution: they decoupled the file manager display (the desktop) from the
directory tree. For each entry in the file system, there were actually 2: the file/directory
itself and a .info file which described the entry for the desktop (icon, path, clicking behaviour).
So if you had a bin directory which you wanted to show on the desktop, you had to
create a bin.info file. Removing the entry from the desktop simply requires removing the .info file.
That way, you could even decouple the entire desktop from the filesystem if you wanted,
because the .info files would contain paths to the actual applications. You'd have to make
a dummy directory structure containing only .info files though.
Making an equivalent to "My Documents" on Windows would be easy too: just have a .info
pointing to the actual save directory on a certain application. There could be an option
on a directory to create default .info files for every file in it.

There are a couple of issues here (well, probably lots more than just these):
1. Where is the 'root' view? For *nix I think it would actually be best to let that be the home
directory. Even a subdirectory of the home could be used. / seems about the worst possible
choice, although it would be an easy to configure option. Just not that easy to change once
you have it set up...
2. What to do on initial installation. If the root view is the home directory, it would be
feasible to go through it and create .info files for everything that's there. I feel that would
be an acceptable starting position, but this could also be made configurable.
3. Clutter. Having all those extra files would give an ungly mess, especially in the
home directory. Making them dotfiles would partially solve that problem, but I think
a lot of you would not agree :) This is arguably the biggest problem with this setup.
4. Icons. Specifying icons in the .info file would not be a good idea IMHO. It was ok for
Amiga, but not for us.
5. Creating .info files. This should obviously be done through Nautilus, not by hand.
6. It's something that will only be familiar to (ex-)Amiga users, the rest will probably
need some adjustment. It would also give Nautilus users an entirely different view of
your home directory than any other file manager or even the shell, which could be
(very) confusing to the end user.

I think it worked rather well for Amiga, but on that platform it was the default behaviour
so it might not be a good solution for us (too different etc).

Dirk





danw ximian com@SMTP gnome org on 04/24/2001 01:09:12 AM
Sent by:	gnome-private-members-admin gnome org
To:	seth eazel com@SMTP
cc:	gnome-hackers gnome org@SMTP
miguel ximian com@SMTP 
Subject:	Re: [Nautilus-list] Integration of gmc and nautilus desktop directories.
Classification:	Restricted
> The other issue at hand is having random unwanted "application setting
> folders" lying on the desktop if it were the homedir. On a heavily used
> system with lots of applications (my own), I only have three, two of
> which can be eliminated by changes to GNOME programs.

Every mail program I know of defaults to putting non-dotfile files or
directories in $HOME. Eg, I run random mail programs from time to time,
and right now I have 5 non-dotfile mail directories in my homedir, and 0
dotfile mail directories. And you're not going to get *all* of those
programs to change their defaults.

I also wouldn't want to see ~/bin on my desktop, but it would be dumb to
have to rename it to something else. I'm sure other people have other
good examples of files they want or need to have in their homedir but
wouldn't want to see on the desktop.

So IMHO, the right thing (if you're going to go with $HOME==Desktop) is
to let the user right click -> "Don't show on desktop", and Nautilus can
just keep a list of those files and not show them.

-- Dan

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