Re: [gnome-network]Download manager

[Manuel Clos <llanero eresmas net>]

tapia wrote:
> That's how I think a modern download manager would be, taking as model
> the Windows program GetRight:

Well, look at FlashGet and other donwload managers. FlashGet is not very 
HIG compliant but has most of the features.

BTW, have you looked at downman (Gnome Download Manager) ?

> * Segmented downloads.

Some support is in. Need to come with GUI. After downman-0.1.

> 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.

I agree here, but probably Rodrigo is rigth. Don't complicate where it 
is not needed.


> * 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.

You will get a *big* tooltip/context menu if you have some downloads, so 
I don't like the idea. Do it simple, then let it launch the Main Window, 
there is no need to duplicate funtionality in the same application.

> * Main window.
>
> Toolbar:
>
> 	* New -> New download dialog
> 	* Start -> Starts the selected downloads
> 	* Stop -> Stops the selected downloads
> 	* Start All
> 	* Stop All

I don't like the "All" buttons, what are they suposed to do? Can you 
explain in which cases are they useful?

> A TreeView with the following columns:
>
> 	* A checkbox showing if the download is selected or not.
What do you mean by "selected"?

> 	* The file name
> 	* The file size
> 	* A ProgressBar showing the download percent.
> 	* Download speed.

All done in dowman. Look at the screenshot at the web page, it will give 
you an idea if you don't want to install it. Next release will also 
feature mime-type icons along the filenames.

> * 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...

I'm not sure if this is needed for the main application. There is 
already a "Properties" dialog in gdownman. But it will be useful for 
epiphany and such.

> Here you can see a GetRight control window:
>
> www.eitig.com/~tapia/capturas/getright.jpg

Yeah, really ugly. Take a look at gdownman:

http://downman.sourceforge.net/#Screenshots

I can do some more screenshots of gdownman if you really don't want to 
install it.

In addition you haven't talked about:

- having multiple projects so you can categorize your downloads
	- speed limit per project
	- default directory per project
	- max simultaneous downloads per project

- speed limit per download (that plays nicely with the project speed limit)
	- downloads can be queued: they are downloaded when the simultaneous 
downloads is not at the limit.

- recursive downloads
	- simple at the moment, this needs a especial tree-like project in 
gdownman to handle it well, so you can download web sites in an easy way.

All the above is _already_ done in downman, please take a look.

I'm currently implementing per server downloads limit, this is, you will 
be able to limit the number of simultaneous connections to 
ftp://ftp.gnome.org.

About _inclusion_ in gnome-network, I'm not sure at the moment, downman 
is coming big and I would like someone to develop a KDE client. About 
gnome-network _integration_, for sure :)

Anyway, if you want to really start another project, define some IDL so 
programs can operate with different download managers seamlessly.


--
Manuel Clos
llanero eresmas net

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