Nautilus state of mission (was: Re: Reasoning for Removal of Extra Pane Mode?)

[Holger Berndt <berndth gmx de>]

>But actually an easy 
>way to copy or move files/directories from one location to another 
>should be regarded as a core feature for a *file manager* like Nautilus. 

I would also very much be interested in the real reasons for this
removal.

The main reasoning seems to be that with window snapping, it's not
needed anymore. I already repeatedly explained why window snapping is
not the same as extra pane, but that was unfortunately ignored so far.

In general, the alleged reason that it doesn't fit the concepts of
GNOME 3 seems weird. In fact, historically, it's the exact other way
round: GNOME 3 was the _reason_ for the merge of the extra pane
functionality in the first place!

And that's not a secret. When GNOME Shell was about to come up at the
horizon, Alex Larsson widely communicated a "Change in focus" for
Nautilus [1]. The reasoning was that with GNOME Shell, Nautilus is not
mainly the application / document launcher anymore, but its usecase is
mostly "more advanced file management". That's what motivated merging
extra pane, and some other prominent changes.

This was the last widely communicated mission statement that I know of.

It's rather alienating to see numerous feature removals that seem to
directly contradict this, especially when performed silently.

I'm asking for a re-evaluation of these removals, and, in case of
doubt, reverts before an upcomming release creates possibly unwanted
facts.

Holger

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2009-December/msg00038.html