Re: Split/dual pane view again (but this time with code)

[Holger Berndt <berndth gmx de>]

On Di, 24.02.2009 10:48, Alexander Larsson wrote:

[about Dolphin]
>Adding the
>complexity of that and then not using it even for the most common
>operations (copy/move to other pane) seems kind of weird.

Yes, indeed.

>However, I like how they show the active pane, they disable the
>path-bar, plus make the background and frame grayed out on the disabled
>pane. The background makes it very obvious which one is active.

Yes, plus they draw a thin border line around the active window. Very
clear and intuitive. I just don't know how this would affect
accesibility themes that Calum was talking about.

>Also, i see dolphin does splits-in-tabs, not tabs-in-split. I wonder
>what is most useful.

Dolphin is the first filemanager I have seen that does this. I find it
confusing and counter-intuitive. For me, a tab should represent a
folder view, not a collection of (two) such views. Dual-pane is a layer
between a single window and two windows side-by-side, and not another
"view" mode.

That's also the way other filemanagers do it (Total Commander,
Freecommander, even Krusader, just to name three).

>> Yes. But it's the beauty of extensions that something like this doesn't
>> have to go to the core program, and doesn't shift any user's
>> Nautilus style that didn't explicitely ask for it.
>
>As a maintainer of a distro I don't quite see it the same way. There
>will just be lots of pressure to install the extensions by default, just
>like there is pressure to add the open terminal extension (its in fact
>installed by default in RHEL).

While I can understand your reasoning, I am not sure what conclusion to
draw from your point of view. Is extensibility and plugin-support a bad
thing just because somebody could implement an extension that your
customers/users really like, who in turn could put social pressure on
the distributor? Isn't, on the other hand, such a pressure a clear vote
that the existence of the extension is very important?

>I guess one way to make this less weird is to always have a "copy to"
>submenu, similar to the dolphin one.

I am not sure about which menu in Dolphin you're talking. I didn't see
a "copy to" submenu.

>It would have home, root, maybe
>some bookmarks/mounts and then let you dive down into these as menus.
>Then we could just add a "other pane" menu item in the split view case.
>That would make it more obvious that this is a standard operation with a
>different way of specifying the target.

So we would have "Edit -> Copy to" and "Edit -> Move to" submenus with
default targets. The "Edit -> Move to trash" menu item could move in
there, too. That sounds very good to me.

Holger