[Thunar-dev] [Usability] Proposed simplifications

[Brian J. Tarricone]

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Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> whistler at fnord.ch wrote:
> 
>>>>Hm, somehow I think, there's a difference between navigating the file
>>>>system and acting on the file system. Action happens in the main view,
>>>>navigation *can* happen in the main view, but it will most often happen
>>>>in the pure navigational components (favourites pane, tree pane,
>>>>location bar, location dialog/entry, ...).
>>>>
>>>>Or do I miss a point here?
>>>
>>>I don't think that the shotcut/favourites/bookmark pane counts as a 
>>>full fledged
>>>navigational component. It allows you to jump to a certain point in the
>>>filesystem hierarchy, but afterwards you have to use some of the other
>>>navigational components (the tree pane, location bar/dialog/entry)).
>>>
>>>In the current implementation, however, you cannot use this combination.
>>
>>Of course the tree-view-pane would have to implement the same file 
>>manipulation
>>capabilities as the list view and the icon view. OS X has something similar,
>>though they don't show the shortcut pane while the tree view is active, I
>>think.
>  
> Dunno. People requested the Window Explorer like tree-navigation in the 
> sidepane several times. And I know quite a few people that complained 
> about the missing side-tree in xffm several times (xffm has two 
> independent tree panes).
> 
> We could add a main tree view later (if necessary). It doesn't fit the 
> current design either, where the ThunarListModel is actually a list 
> representation of a folder, rather than a tree (that could be changed of 
> course).
> 
> I kinda understand your point, but experience tells me that this is not 
> the way most people will want to interact with Thunar. I'd like to hear 
> how the others think about this topic.

Agreed.  Having the treeview in the right-hand pane with files is just a
rehash of xffm (a rather small part of it, even).  People who like that
usage model should just go ahead and use xffm.

I don't think it's a problem to have the shortcuts pane and treeview
pane as mutually exclusive.  By definition, you're not going to be using
them simultaneously: either you're picking from your shortcuts, or
you're navigating the tree.  Switching between them if you like both
might be a pain, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept.

	-brian
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