Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Goals

[Ramiro Estrugo <ramiro fateware com>]

mitch nuclear physics gatech edu wrote:
> 
>         I write with the concern of Nautilus' future.  As of now, Nautilus
> is completely unuseful. I'm aware that it isn't finished yet but it is
> unfortunately already labeled a  > 1.0 version. I'll just list the issues
> below in order to make things cleaner.
> 
> A.)Mozilla:
>         Why does Nautilus need to use mozilla? Doesn't this produce a lot
> of overhead? Nautilus should browse files, perhaps be used for
> configurations, and simple html use. Wouldn't gtkhtml get the job done and
> done quicker?
> 

Like I've said in the past, go hack on gtkhtml and nautilus-gtkhtml. 
Make these
so fast, light, and able to browse as many web pages as mozilla that it
will
just make sense to use them for Nautilus.  You are not saying anything
new or
interesting by stating that Mozilla causes overhead.

> B.)Xrender
>         What's the status on Xrender support? I realized that AA
> fonts,etc.. should be done via gtk 2.0 in the future but what about the
> mouse drag alpha? Wouldn't the use of Xrender on this speed things up for
> us that have the hardware support?

We want to use Xrender.  Until it is more widely available, and more 
importantly, available at the toolkit level there's really no point in
us
hacking it in.  Also, as others have stated, Xrender in its current
state
doesn't do all of the stuff we need for Nautilus.

> 
> C.)GTK
>         Being realistic, how much is gtk 1.2.x slowing Nautilus down? In
> my experience, QT has proved to be faster. The worse case I can think of
> is for users in 16 bit and even worse in 15 bit. Gtk has to dither
> down. If the user is in 15 bit, gtk has to dither down to 16 and then
> dither down to 15. This makes things god awful slow. Gtk 2.0 should be
> faster and better but it's of course not mainstream yet and the extent at
> which gtk 1.2.x slows things down is not really known. Or is it?

Being realistic, dumping toolkits and starting from scratch with a new
and
non evil toolkit is the surest way to derail a project.  The Nautilus
project barely has the resources to do normal mainternership stuff, lest
to
rewrite it for whatever reason.   Anyway, I feel dumb for giving a
rational
answer to an insane question, but there it is.

> 
> D.)UI
>         No offense, but the current UI design of Nautilus itself and the
> desktop is horrible. More thought needs to be put into this. I'd love to
> help and play with ideas if anyone is interested. People keep blowing the
> UI off as if it's already fine or as if anything else will cause too much
> hand holding. The truth is that a good UI design is hard to accomplish and
> takes a lot of effort. Mac OS X is of course a note worthy example of a
> intuitive, simple, but powerful UI. As of now, gnome, kde, nautilus,
> etc... is too careless with packing options upon options in menus and
> even submenus.  The organization shows the lack of real effort towards the
> UI.

I've never worked on a project before where the UI designers, who also
happen
to be the hackers, care so much about UI and empathize with the user. 
If you
have specific suggestions for making things better, please make them. 
Even
though you are making rude and insane statements, we will still listen
to you
if you have specific good ideas for making Nautilus better.

> 
> E.)Useful Features
>         The features that go into Nautilus should be simple but
> powerful. Applications today pack way too many features in out of the fact
> that they can rather than the fact that they should. What you end up with
> is a bloated piece of software with menus full of options that are
> unproductive and useless. If Nautilus is for file browsing, we all need to
> think of more creative ways to manage files via a UI. As of now, file
> management via a UI can't even compare to a bash prompt. Some say it can't
> be done but I think it can. More effort is needed.  The pros of a UI need
> to be mixed with the pros of a bash promt and then merged together. There
> is no reason a popup window can't take input for specific styles of
> management. Ex. have two delete options. A.) Delete/move to
> trash. B.)Delete Advanced->delete files containing ..,, delete files
> starting with, delte files ending with, delete files of date, etc.....
> So one could click on "Delete Advance", a window pops up with a checkbox
> for the style of delete and a insertion field on the bottom. Anyway, you
> guys get the point

You're confusing me.  First you say that Nautilus is bloated and packs
too
many options into menus, and then you say there's is no reason why a
delete 
menu cant have 5 (FIVE) delete options and even an Advanced delete
option ?

> 
> F.)Clearer Navigation
> THe nautilus window should at all times show a clear way of moving between
> any disk and the network. Icons of each disk(cdrom, floppy, zip,
> individual partition icons making up the image of a whole hard disk,
> etc..) should be showed on the nautilus window. Then there should be a
> icon for the local netwowrk for browsing the shares of other
> computers. However, even these suggestions should be thought over much
> more carefully than I have done in order not to confuse the user of
> duplicate things.

Ok, good finally something useful.  This kind of idea would need to be 
refined a lot more before starting to hack on it.  But its a good 
brainstorming start.  One way to spell this out would be to make mockups
of Nautilus (using the GIMP or something).

> 
> The real solution is for the Nautilus and gnome teams to get together,
> discuss UI possibilities, compromise on a solution, and everyone stick to
> it. The full UI should not be redundant or confusing. If I want to browse
> the local network, I shouldn't have to decide between 5 different ways.It
> should be clear that I must do it via Nautilus. The way in which the
> system should be configured is a bit tough too. Will the setup options
> stay in the gnome menu or will they move into nautilus? Perhaps they will
> be in the gnome menu but open up within a nautilus window. Ex. Gnome
> menu->
> 1.)System Setup
> 2.)User preferences
> 3.)Services Setup

Again you are contradicting yourself.  You say that the Nautilus and
GNOME teams
should get together, but before you said we should dump GTK+ and use QT,
hmm...

Im not sure why you say you have to decide between 5 different ways to
browse
the local network.

Doesn't asking for more features like setup options to configure the
system go
against your previous statement that Nautilus is already too bloated ?

> 
> when clicked, they open up within the nautilus window. The question then
> is if these options should be accessable via a vanilla nautilus window
> that is browsing the users home directoy? Would this lead to confusion.

Yes, it leads to my confusion cause I don't understand it at all.

> 
> Anyway, all the possibilities is overwhelming and there doesn't really
> seem to be much use in planning out a good UI for nautilus unless everyone
> on the nautilus and gnome team can work together.Anyone have any thoughts
> on this or any info that I'm unaware of? Thanks.
> _______________________________________________
> Nautilus-list mailing list

Exactly because all the possibilities are overwhelming, the nautilus UI
hackers
have spent a lot of time and energy coming up with solutions that work
given
all the sometimes conflicting goals that Nautilus has.

The one thing I somewhat agree with you, even though you really didn't
do a good
job of explaining it, is that the ultimate goals for Nautilus are not
always clear.
Is it a tool for beginner users ?  Is it "GUI" for hackers ?  A lot of
the stuff
you see in Nautilus are compromises between these 2 extremes.  The UI
hackers of
Nautilus might have felt that there was a simpler way to implement
something, but
demand from the community caused us to add more options or even add
whole new 
features.  I could list many such examples, but I wont because you can
read the
mini flame fests that occurred when Nautilus 1.0 shipped and how the
Nautilus team
dealt with the criticism on post 1.0 versions.

-re