[Thunar-dev] Spatial or not-spatial?

[Auke Kok]

Jasper Huijsmans wrote:

> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>
>> I have talked to quite a few people about the spatial or not-spatial 
>> question recently, and I came to the conclusion, that atleast Thunar 
>> 1.0 should implement the browser-like paradigm.
>>
>
> Hehe. At FOSDEM Auke just held a very good speech (almost passionate 
> ;-) about why we should use spatial. What were your reasons to change 
> your mind? 


I have to adjust my POV and clear something about this: I had very badly 
prepared my speech and not spent time to do the proper literature work 
required for a half-decent speech. Brian correctly pointed this out ;^).

Hoever, Benny definately has got a good formula (needs maybe one or two 
things to make it really usable, but the concept is good) with the 
mockup he presented us. It reminds me strongly of the gtk file-chooser, 
and that is IMO a good thing (as I also stated in the talk).

This brings us back to the 'spatial' or 'non-spatial' dilemma. I hope I 
was clear in my dev-room meeting that something purely spatial will not 
fit our needs... however, and this is a point that Benny missed by being 
gloriously absent, an Xfce wrapped with a file manager may very well be 
not what every seasoned user want, and the modular setup of Xfce will 
provide him with alternative ways to play with his files.

perhaps this is a good time to iterate that the file manager itself 
should only be -one- gui. There will be many in the future if we do 
things right, like the desktop (being the secondmost important GUI to 
the file manager), and possibly even the start menu in the far future. 
The real file manager should perhaps even be a non-gui application or 
library (although a process will undoubtably be a better design for the 
sake of IPC).

Personally, my opinion doesn't matter. Neiter does the *personal* 
opinion of any developer. It's all about our target audience... and this 
is where all of us have to admit that we're in the dark. Benny's best 
guess is a navigational file manager, one that closely resembles other 
parts of xfce's gui already (gtk file chooser), and thus will most 
likely be a good choice.

perhaps we should leave spatial to Alexander and his group. I loved his 
comment about him using mc to do real hands-on file management stuff ;^)

enough ... I need more coffee!

sofar