Re: nautilus

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2002 at 10:16:39PM -0400 or thereabouts, Peter Leftwich wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Sep 2002, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> > I have a gnome-session-save command in /usr/bin/ which was provided
> > by gnome-session. In Gnome 1.4 this used to be save-session, but
> > we seem to have renamed a pile of commands for 2.0.  Run that.
> 
> # which gnome-session-save
> /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session-save
> # man gnome-session-save
> No manual entry for gnome-session-save
> 
> More and more I have noticed that X apps do not have man pages.  How do
> they expect users to feel safe and informed about what various commands do
> if the only way to find out is to run them?

Having tried to write man pages for Gnome apps, I can attest that
it's a lot easier to write stuff in DocBook: the occasional 
screenshot or "this --> is what you should see" is often well
worth a thousand words. Also, the extremely terse and succinct
classic man page approach is something that is hard to read (and
to write!) when you're just starting out. gnome-session-save
would be easy to write a man page for, but gnome-terminal: well.
Um. There's a project for a rainy day. 

However, I agree that man pages are good and can confidently say
up to date man pages will go in happily. Because I miss them too
and have written a couple myself, despite knowing nothing about
the right way to write them. If you have some knocking around,
please contribute them (via Bugzilla, ideally).

Anyway: _almost_ any Gnome application can be invoked with "--help"
as per the GNU convention about "--help" and "--usage" always
working. You have to pick through and disregard all the GTK- and
bonobo-specific ones and look for the application-specific ones,
but it should always be there.

I think I would consider "no --help or --usage" in a Gnome app
a bug, myself. Must see whether it's in the HIG.

> > I do not know what an active desktop is. I would mildly disagree
> > that "Nautilus _is_ the Gnome 2 desktop". I don't use a file manager
> > and I fancy that I am running Gnome 2 :) I just turned Nautilus
> > off, because I don't need little pictures on my root window
> > either.
> 
> How did you turn Nautilus off and "associate" folders being single clicked
> with running your fm (file manager) of choice?

I dunno, actually. I just don't have it running. This started off
as a default RH beta install, and I changed a lot to make it How
I Like It. At some stage that involved killing nautilus. I am 
afraid my file manager of choice is the command line, generally. 
If I were organising a lot of pictures, I might start nauti, I 
suppose, but I just don't use file managers in general.

I realise this is not much help. I shall look for something more
useful later when I play with a test account.

> > I haven't used Windows so I don't know what the behaviour of
> > Explorer or this other thing is.
> 
> Someone told me that mc (Midnight Commander) and Endeavour are very
> windowsy as far as fm's go.  I may try those tonight.  Also, if any of you

Probably explains why I end up deleting mc all the time after typo'ing
"mv". It confuses me, but if it's based on another OS that would 
explain it. :) 
 
> Oops.  Thanks - good point.  Cool name by the way, an anagram away from
> electricity and stormy weather (Tesla).  ;-)

And judging by the hits I get on my website which come from Google,
a lot of people think it's how you spell poor Nikolai's name. My
favourite was someone looking for information on "telsa antigravitation".
I would be interested in having my own anti-gravity field too :) 

Telsa