[Thunar-dev] Some UI Ideas

[Auke Kok]

Adam Scheinberg wrote:

>>Remember, our goal is not to make the perfect file manager. Our goal is to
>>make a very simple file manager that works well for basic file management
>>tasks.
>>    
>>
>Why? Perfect doesn't have to mean all encompassing... by why purposely
>leave out features that might useful? I've used Gnome and KDE on a
>hundred distros - since Eazel disappeared, they ALL use Nautilus and
>Konq respectively.  Yet with XFCE, lots of people writing distros
>switch out XFFM.  Doesn't that suggest that maybe a more robust, less
>confusing FM would be useful?
>  
>

The goal of 'thunar' is to write a decent basic file manager, not to 
nautilus or konqueror. This way we can provide a very decent file 
manager for not-too complex tasks that suits being packaged with xfce.

This completely fits in the xfce motto: modular, fast and lightweight.

>>>1. The ability to preview text files in the icon, and preview audio with a hover
>>>      
>>>
>>Not sure this is within the scope of a simple file manager.
>>    
>>
>That could be true. It doesn't really comprimise much to give that up.
>  
>

this type of feature heavily increases your file manager, as audio is 
only one of 100s of files. You'll need a plugin structure to manage 
this, and plugins for about every other type to handle previews. This 
really very quickly gains weight.


>>>3. The ability to easily mount and browser remote systems via SSH,
>>>FTP, NFS, and SMB.
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't think so. Use a 'big' filemanager, like nautilus for that. That's only
>>my personal opinion though.
>>    
>>
>Again, not a requirement - we have gFTP if necessary.  I always think
>mounting remote filesystems makes for great productivity, but I do
>lots of web development for my company, so...
>  
>

this feature actually might be nice, but you're asking for a new VFS 
implementation. This is out of the question for thunar-1.0. If 
freedesktop.org makes some haste with D-VFS it might become used in the 
future tho.

Think of this as a missing layer below the file-manager... it makes no 
sense to write a filemanager to solve this puzzle (yet) !


sofar