[Thunar-dev] Applications virtual folder

[Benedikt Meurer]

Christian Lundgren wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I was thinking how it would be nice to have a virtual folder in Thunar
> that contains installed applications. Sort of like OS X' finder:
> http://www.moose.co.uk/gfx/sup/dup/max/itc/finder-apps-win.gif
> 
> This could probably be done by integrating parts of xfdesktop, I've made
> two mockups based on the idéa:
> http://lunke.se/tmp/thunar-apps.png
> http://lunke.se/tmp/thunar-apps2.png
> 
> So what do you think?

Thunar already supports applications using their .desktop files. E.g.
you could create a folder "Applications" and put in the various .desktop
files (or just open $prefix/share/applications).

Real integration with the menu system, as done with the menu-method in
gnome-vfs, is not planned for 1.0. Indeed, I don't think this is a good
thing to have in the default file manager anyways. I'd like to see this
as separate application (probably hooked into the file manager at some
place), whose GUI is similar to that of Thunar. This should be easy to
write (probably using thunar-vfs for async loading, etc.). You could
also modify the xfce4-appfinder accordingly.

OS X is another story. There you have application bundles (ROX includes
a similar feature), where applications are folders, that aren't entered
by the file manager, but are executed when clicked. This is something we
could support w/o too much hassle. But then again, as known from ROX,
this doesn't integrate very well into the modern Unix/Linux desktops.

> /Lunke

Benedikt