[Thunar-dev] various observations

[Jaap Karssenberg]

Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>>2) When in "detailed list" mode you can not drag multiple files. If I 
>>select multiple files with the keyboard and I try to drag them with the 
>>mouse I only drag one files instead of the selection. Maybe this is 
>>related to 1) ?
> 
> That's the expected behaviour. Hold down Control to drag multiple files.
> Tho, while thinking about it, it doesn't necessarily make much sense...
> dunno.

Nope, control+click modifies selection state, which is the default for a 
gtktreeview. I found that when dragging with the right mouse button 
things work but for the left mouse button the button-press event is used 
for selections etc.

Don't really know how this should work but I got the feeling a lot of 
users are going to expect drag-n-drop using the left mouse button 
because this is how the iconview works and also how a lot of other 
programs behave.

>>Also I have one wish-list item. Could there also be a list view which is 
>>_not_ a detailed list. Thunar does not create much overview in large 
>>directories, the icon view shows relatively few items, even when zoomed 
>>out and the list view uses a lot of the screen for details. A view with 
>>filenames besides the icons (a list view) but without details can fit 
>>the most files in the window area; I would really like this.
> 
> Doesn't the icon view with text-beside-icons do that already? I.e.
> http://foo-projects.org/~benny/tmp/thunar-list-view.png

Yes and no. This is indeed the look I intended but there are some 
differences:

A) The text besides the icons is wrapped to multiline when it is longer 
than X characters. This causes a lot of whitespace because it makes 
other items in the same row assume the same hight. Also there is a lot 
of spacing in the icon view which is still there when text is besides 
the icons.

I put two screenshots in 
http://zoidberg.student.utwente.nl/~pardus/tmp/thunar_screenshots/ to 
illustrate this.

But I'll admit this is a purely cosmetic wish-list item.

B) The icon view is ordered left to right but when I'm visually scanning 
  lists I expect a top to bottom order in the columns. Of course I can 
get used to scanning left to right, but it won't feel real natural for 
lists.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

-- Jaap <pardus at cpan.org>