Re: Geometry issues ...

[David Watson <dwatson cs ucr edu>]

On 2 Jul 2002, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 	Fine - but lets not keep saving it - I mean drag the window around, and
> see it flicker - switch virtual desktop with a large directory and see
> the horrible slowness as it re-sorts, re-lays out and re-renders the
> whole thing. Also, the disk IO is just ugly.

I think everyone agrees that we shouldn't be doing any re-sorts,
re-renders, etc.  However the disk IO problem, if it is occurring, sounds
like a bug in the metadata machinery.  When we originally discussed the
metadata update problem Darin suggested that the metadata wouldn't (or
shouldn't anyway) goto disk each time it was saved.

> 	It is also the case that the geometry management doesn't work at all
> with virtual desktops, for example start nautilus, switch to the desktop
> to the right of it, killall -9 nautilus, watch the window appear in a
> totally manic position. [ to do with negative offsets, clipping etc. ]
>
> 	After some more thought here is my conclusion:
>
> 	Saving / obeying the geometry in the meta-data seems to only make sense
> to me for the "browse each URL in a new window" setting, and if that
> setting is not turned on, then we are really doing a dis-service to
> usability, since when you do 'Control-N' your windows all get piled on
> top of the other window instead of the WM doing something sensible with
> them.

Yeah, I was also annoyed when I learned about the new Ctrl-N behavior..

> 	So, action item 1: Don't do geometry saving for the single
> 			   window browse mode - it just complicates the
> 			   semantics horribly.

This feature was basically the entire point of Frank's original patch.
While I don't really feel strongly about it, it appears to me that others
do.  IMHO, it is not unreasonable to expect nautilus to save geometry in
single window browse mode - the only unreasonable thing is that this
currently leads to unwanted refreshes and, arguably, the Ctrl-N problem.

> 	So, action item 2: Since we get a new window per URI _anyway_ we
> only need to save the geometry on window close
> 			   and restore it on window creation.

We might still not save the geometry if the user browses with the "Open in
This Window" right-click option.  One possible way around this would be to
save the geometry at location change time.  While I suppose this might be
workable, it is a shame that we can't just avoid getting extraneous
metadata updates.

Maybe you could wait a little while before commiting this?  Just to give
everyone a little time to digest it.  (We all know you can code faster
than most of us can think.. ;-)

Well, good luck, whatever you do,

  - David

-- 
The theory of groups is a branch of Mathematics in which one does
something to something and then compares the result with the result
obtained from doing the same thing to something else, or something else to
the same thing.
J. R. Newman