[Thunar-dev] Some GUI Suggestions.

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Benedikt Meurer wrote:

> Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
>
>> No no no no no.  I really don't see why this is so hard for you to 
>> wrap your mind around.  
>
> Ok, I stopped reading here. And we really need some clarification: I'm 
> basicly open to everything - if I wouldn't, I then Filer/Thunar 
> development would not be open for discussion.

If you're basically open to everything, then why have you repeatedly put 
down the idea of making a flexible file manager that can be either 
spatial or navigational?  It *is* doable, and without confusing the 
user.  As long as the *defaults* make sense, and you make the presence 
of the *UI features* the options (treeview, toolbar, menubar, location 
bar, bookmarks list, etc. etc. etc.), and not have some arbitrary 
"spatial mode" and "navigational mode", there's no need to even care 
about making any kind of distinction.  The default behavior will be one 
thing (which just happens to correspond to the spatial way of doing 
things), and the user can customise it at will.  The UI isn't in any 
particular "mode".

> Then again, to make sure everybody reads my mail correct, I hilighted 
> my very personal opinions with **. I'm not the target user for Thunar, 
> so thats just my opinion, nothing more nothing less.

Of course.  By necessity, all of this discussion boils down to people's 
opinions.  You can do as many UI studies as you like, and there will be 
some types of UI that are obviously bad and obviously good, but there 
will be some (such as spatial vs. navigational) where a majority opinion 
is all you can use.

Not being a target user for Thunar, you have a somewhat-unique position 
with good points and bad points.  On one hand, you're more likely to 
design a user-neutral interface, since you don't have a personal stake 
in it.  But on the other hand, you don't really care about it in the 
sense that you want to make something that's useful for you (essentially 
eliminating the "scratching an itch" motivation from the OSS process).  
I think that just about all the rest of us on this list probably are 
interested in a final result that they can use, so your perspective is 
very useful.

> What makes me sad is that you - who cares for noone else and who is 
> apparently limited to 'I need a treeview' - tries to tell me that I 
> should wrap my mind around.

Wow, you really need your interpretation engine fixed.  Nowhere did I 
ever say I don't care for anyone else.  I simply said that I'm not going 
to spend my free time working on something that I wouldn't use myself.  
There's a huge difference, and if you can't see that, I can't help you.  
If you'd actually read what I wrote, you'd see that most of my 
suggestions revolve around a spatial interface as the default, with the 
features that *I want* disabled by default, because I agree that they 
may not be necessary (or may be confusing) to a new user.  Basically, 
I've jumped on the whole "spatial may be easier for new users" 
bandwagon, but I want to make something that I will find useful as well, 
without making it less usable to new users, and without making the 
implementation overly complex.

I like and make heavy use of a treeview.  So?  I can easily see that 
other people don't use one (or only use it occasionally) and recognise 
that it should be an optional feature.  I think that qualifies me as 
being pretty open-minded on the subject.  However, with 
seeminly-sarcastic statements like "But I'm sure somebody will complain 
about the missing treeview or the missing location bar (or to sum up: 
the UI is too easy to use), yannow..." and others that display your 
total misunderstanding of my position, like "and what confuses me is, 
that brian who says he doesn't care about users, now wants to layout the 
svn structure for the users" seem to indicate that I'm not the one who 
has a problem being open-minded.

    -brian

P.S.  As an aside to the "or to sum up: the UI is too easy to use" 
comment: sure, the simple spatial UI is easy to use.  IMHO, there's no 
such thing as *too* easy to use.  But in making something easy to use, 
you often make it less powerful.  I object not to the ease-of-use, but 
to the loss of flexibility and power that a spatial interface implies.  
That's why I want an (optional!) treeview, location bar, etc.