[Thunar-dev] Virtual root node

[Auke Kok]

Biju Chacko wrote:

> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>
>> I came across this question yesterday evening:
>>
>> Should we have a virtual root node like `Computer' (Gnome) or 
>> something like that? So all other nodes (Filesystem, Home, Removable 
>> Media) are children of that node.
>>
>> The reasons leading to this:
>>
>>  1) With the current design ideas, we have a special URI media type 
>> 'home://' that refers to files belows the users home directory. And 
>> going `Up' from 'home://' should not be possible (atleast it should 
>> not jump to 'file:///usr/home' then). But not being able to go `Up' 
>> from $HOME is a bit too restrictive and not very easy.
>>
>>  2) Having 3 or 4 toplevel root nodes in a treepane seems to be very 
>> uncommon for a software that handles files/directories. A single root 
>> node seems to be the common case here (e.g. `Computer' in Gnome, 
>> `Desktop' in Windows, `/' in KDE, ...).
>>
>> Opinions?
>
>
> If you run nautilus --browser, the treeview has two toplevel nodes: 
> Home and Filesystem. That seems fairly reasonable.
>
> I really don't see the need for a special 'home://' URI. What's wrong 
> with 'file://'? IAC, in the default view you won't be showing the URI 
> will you? 



I would go even further!

The normal user has nothing too look for in the filesystem... those 
files are not writeable to him and the only thing in there is unindexed 
blob. The only thing interesting could be applications, but those should 
install a proper .desktop file and show up on other locations already...

so, the Filesystem topnode is for experts, which leads me to believe 
that we should have the following topnodes (in this order)

+ Home
+ Removable Media
+ Filesystem

The Filesystem root should possibly be hidden for normal users, in any 
case it should be discouraged for normal users to traverse this tree

The Removable Media root *should* be available to users, and since it is 
virtually completely different than the users home directory, a separate 
root reflects this level of separation, after all both /home/joe and 
/media/cdrom are inside the same vfs but still completely unrelated.

I think.