Re: [gnome-network]Download manager

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 19:17 +0200, tapia wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> This is my first message to this list, and my english isn't very good,
> so excuse me if I make some miskates :-)
> 
> Well, I talk this morning with rodrigo about writing a download manager
> for gnome-network. I'm writing one for Mono, so we can reuse the
> analysis.
> 
> That's how I think a modern download manager would be, taking as model
> the Windows program GetRight:
> 
> * Segmented downloads.
> 
> The app must allow several connections to a server, or download
> fragments of the file from different mirrors. For doing this, GetRight
> uses two techniques:
> 
> 	* Mirror search engines. There are internet services for that.
> 	  Generally it's not very useful, but sometimes allow you to
> 	  avoid a slow mirror.
> 
> 	* If you want to download two files with the same name from
> 	  different servers, GetRight look if they are the same file. If
> 	  they are, then it segments the download, using the servers as
> 	  mirrors.
> 
> Each download segment is absolutely independent, and the user can stop,
> restart or change the mirror of it.
> 
as we've been talking all day on IRC :-), I think this is a good idea,
provided we don't have the hyper-ugly UI you showed me
(http://www.eitig.com/~tapia/capturas/getright.jpg). I don't think users
should be selecting which segment to download from which server.

Instead of that, we can use something, internally, like what BitTorrent
does, which is to find the quickest mirror, and use that one. We could
even do the segmented download, if you want, but all internally, without
any user intervention at all. If we do a good job on selecting the best
server(s), there is no need for user intervention.

> * Tray Icon. That's my proposal on how to use the tray:
> 
> 	* The tray icon shows the total download speed, or the used
> 	  bandwith percent.
> 
> 	* The tray tooltip show, in separated lines, all the downloads,
> 	  showing the interesting info. By example:
> 	  "linux-2.4.22.tar.bz2 - Size: 17.3 Mb - gotten: 64%"
> 
> 	* left-clicking opens the download manager main window.
> 
> 	* right-clicking shows a popup menu with the downloads, and
> 	  clicking on it shows the control window for this download.
> 
right

> * Main window.
> 
> Toolbar:
> 
> 	* New -> New download dialog
> 	* Start -> Starts the selected downloads
> 	* Stop -> Stops the selected downloads
> 	* Start All
> 	* Stop All
> 
> A TreeView with the following columns:
> 
> 	* A checkbox showing if the download is selected or not.
> 	* The file name
> 	* The file size
> 	* A ProgressBar showing the download percent.
> 	* Download speed.
> 
> * Control Window for each download.
> 
> This window shows more info about the download, and let the user "play"
> with the download segments: change the mirror, add more segments...
> 
sounds good.

As we also talked on IRC, there is Emphetamine
(http://elysium-project.sourceforge.net/), whose author has agreed to be
included in gnome-network. So, I guess we should use that.

cheers