Re: Recently Used Files Proposal

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On 6/2/05, Sven Neumann <sven gimp org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> writes:
> 
> > On the UI side, we should have a GtkRecentChooserDialog and a
> > GtkRecentChooserWidget, for which I have prepared a mockup at the GUADEC
> > Hackfest; you might see it here:
> >
> > http://www.emmanuelebassi.net/images/shots/recent-items-viewer.png
> 
> IMO this dialog is overloaded. There shouldn't be more than three
> lines of text displayed with each item. I also miss previews in your
> proposal. The GtkRecentChooser API should allow applications to
> provide a preview. That's exspecially important for images.

The mockup is a testbed: the MIME type line is redundant, and would be
removed; also, the "not available" emblem (coupled with a "is not
local" emblem) should be enough.

Also, a tooltip could be useful - but we would need the treeview tooltips.

I also agree on your point on the preview.
 
> > I've considered the option of making a menu, but I decided that we
> > should avoid it for latency reasons; applications might just have a
> > "Open recently used..." item which launches the dialog (many
> > applications already use a submenu, there's no difference for the user's
> > point of view), or we could add the ability to show recently used
> > resources into the GtkFileChooser, near where we put the bookmarks.
> 
> Sorry, but what are the latency reasons involved here?

Parsing could be an issue on older machines - even if XML parsing has
become way more efficient.  What I was referring to was the check on
non-local items: this is currently what takes most of the time when
loading the recently used files with the recent-files code, for
instance.  We should keep this issue in mind: some of the files might
reside on non-local volumes.

> IMO providing a
> menu is vital for this proposal to be accepted. Users like the
> recently-used menu very much and I don't think we should take it away
> and replace it with an inconvenient popup dialog.

A menu would never give enough informations on the recently used
items: apart from an icon associated to the mime type, we won't know
their location, or when they were accessed; so, given that we should
provide a tooltip for each item (with an API for adding custom text,
maybe), a menu could be also implemented.

Kind regards,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing
thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
                -- Alan Perlis