Nautilus bugs and design choices

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

Nautilus has over 900 bugs open which are not marked as enhancement requests.
At least one of them requires little more than search and replace. (patch
submitted on list) Many which I've seen require interface design choices
and should easily be fixed given those.

Here are two design choices which made could help resolve bugs. I list an
advantage and two disadvantages for each. I hope that those replying will
extend the lists and eventually a conclusion can be reached.

  Should Nautilus use internal views of non-folder content?

    This is using components such as eog, gnome-gv, and galeon within a
    nautilus window instead of opening one of those as a toplevel window.
    In other words, should a nautilus window ever have a view of something
    which cannot be reasonably presented as a collection of labelled icons?

    Advantage:
      Fewer open windows.

    Disadvantages:
      When the view changes the menus also change, more so than in a
        web browser.
      The window will contain a mix of menus, some of which apply to
        Nautilus generally and some which apply to the item in view.


  Should Nautilus support browser-style navigation?

    This is the mode where opening a folder from an icon view replaces the
    set of icons viewed with those in the newly opened folder.
    This is not MacOS or OS/2 "tunneling" where a folder is opened and its
    parent folder is closed. This does not apply to a multi-column view as
    in NeXT or a detail tree view as in MacOS Finder's outliner mode.

    Advantage:
      Fewer open windows.

    Disadvantages:
      Because of window size and position changes spatial relationships
        are lost.
      Back, foward, up, down, history, and so forth need to be supported.



Cheers,
Greg Merchan