On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Ben West <mrgenixus gmail com> wrote: > Are you sure that column-view isn't patented? -- sounds like implementing it > MIGHT require extending gtk, as I see it. In GNOME, Rhythmbox implements (static) Miller Columns without extending Gtk+. Yes, those _are_ Miller Columns; the Miller Column view is a visualization of tree data structures by representing levels of depth as columns, pruning unwanted branches in each subtree by selected parent nodes and/or in Rhythmbox's example, with the search function. Rhythmbox's implementation successively divides the tree "Music" by (in the attached case) "BT", then Genre, Artist and then Album, with the last level of the tree containing the leaf nodes represented in the wider song list below in more detail. Nautilus would divide the per-mount/per-bookmark file system tree by folders (see the made-in-15-minutes non-Nautilus prototype; other screenshot attachment), but it's the same thing. It's a pretty simple thing to do conceptually: a root GtkTreeView with a master GtkTreeModel which, upon selection of a non-leaf node, spawns another tree view and a GtkTreeModelFilter based on the selection. Repeat the last step recursively as the user traverses the tree. Pack the tree views in a (vertical) scroll window, pack the windows side by side in a hbox inside of a (horizontal) scroll window and you have a dynamic Miller Column view. The problems from there are all implementation details (and there are plenty of them to deal with). You could make a general purpose composite widget for this and stick it in Gtk+, but we would likely need to reinvent/subclass it anyways to make it work around Nautilus' internals. Patents: Unless Mark Miller (caplet.com/papers.html) or one of the (even older ;) Smalltalk goons patented the layout, you can be sure any patent otherwise is likely to be invalid due to prior art. And if the owners of this one haven't sued anyone (read: NeXT, Apple, any one of the hundred websites that have used it at some point including Amazon and eBay, Bugzilla, KDE) by now, then it's not worth our concern. It is currently believed it was invented circa early '80 by Miller (he didn't patent it, though) and any patent from then or earlier would have lapsed and we could use the layout freely. -A. Walton > > On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Victor Araújo <victoraraujo01 gmail com> > wrote: >> >> Hello, >> >> I've been looking through the documentation available on the internet >> about nautilus extensions, but haven't found yet any way to create a >> column-view just like Finder's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yzteex7pYM). >> Could anyone give me a hint on what should I do to do this? >> >> Thanks a lot! >> >> -- >> Victor Araújo >> >> -- >> nautilus-list mailing list >> nautilus-list gnome org >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list > > > -- > nautilus-list mailing list > nautilus-list gnome org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list >
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