[Thunar-dev] Thunar Extension Framework

[Anders Aagaard]

Benedikt Meurer wrote:

>Jaap Karssenberg wrote:
>  
>
>>>Maybe not for version one, but I think that it would be really interesting to
>>>allow extensions to define "virtual files" and "virtual directories", in
>>>addition to adding menu items and such.
>>>
>>>Use cases that I can see would be allowing programs like "Beagle" to provide
>>>virtual folders as a plubin, which would contain running [saved] queries, or to
>>>allow navigation within a tarball, or maybe some sort of "directory unifier"
>>>plugin, to allow displaying all document directories across the computer as
>>>one directory, and many other interesting uses.
>>>
>>>Of course, this is just an idea that I think would be cool to have.
>>>      
>>>
>>Uhm just why exactly do you want to provide these as thunar plugins?
>>
>>IMHO virtual filesystem goodies should not be implemented in the file 
>>manager but in the "real" filesystem. What good are virtual directories 
>>if your non-vfs-enabled programs can't use them !?
>>
>>Take a look at projects like fuse <fuse.sf.net> for implementing virtual 
>>directories at the right level.
>>    
>>
>
>Well, as discussed in various places before, FUSE is pretty useless,
>because it (a) works at the wrong level and (b) is limited to Linux 2.4
>and 2.6.
>
>Doing remote file system abstraction in the kernels VFS layer is exactly
>the wrong abstraction level, as that limits you to the POSIX API, which
>is certainly not what you want in 99% of all (desktop use) cases, esp.
>not within a smart file manager. E.g. there's no way for backends to
>pass additional information (like the suggested mime type, metadata,
>capabilities, etc.) to the application; you are limited to the plain
>POSIX API. And even worse, the POSIX API imposes requirements on the
>backend that require awful hacks to make it work with some remote
>filesystems.
>  
>
Well, the alternative is that every single app will need to support
remote filesystem if it's gonna work properly, which sounds great, but
doesn't work in real life.  In my experience kioslaves are great, very
well done system, works in all kde apps, of course doesn't work with
anything but kde apps.  Gnome's alternative is horrible and I've had a
lot of problems with it, and then there's always the applications that
support neither.

>  
>
>>just my 2p
>>Jaap
>>    
>>
>
>Just my 0,019€,
>
>Benedikt
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>  
>