[Thunar-dev] still about icons

[Benedikt Meurer]

daniele favara wrote:
>>>from a messege i sent to xfce-devel i dicovered thunar will be able to
>>>draw desktop icons.
>>>
>>>Is there any code "ready " ? for this ... i would understand how to
>>>add the support for this in my volume manager.
>>
>>There was some preliminary code, but I removed it some time ago, because
>>it was basicly a mess. I'll import working code when it's ready.
>>
>>But I guess, your question is targeted at "Where should I put my
>>.desktop files to?", right? Thunar just follows the (more or less)
>>accepted standard of using ~/Desktop/ as folder to appear on the desktop.
> 
> even if ~/Desktop folder can be useful for someone, i don't like it
> that much ... i mean ... in unix system the user dir is  $HOME, having
> on the Desktop the Desktop dir can confuse who's having the first
> approach .. anyway i don't see any solution :).
> 
> I would use desktop icons for devices, and maybe even the trash and
> some other special folder as photos and so on ..
> 
> For devices icons don't you think it could be better a different path?
> 
> .thunar/devices or .devices or whatever ...
> Those icons should let the user to:
> 
> * (p)mount (p)umount the device
> * open the folder with FM (thunar)
> 
> normally the mount point is in /media, and maybe should even have a
> special menu.
> 
> So my question is not just
> 
> "Where should I put my .desktop files to?"
> 
> :)
> 
> but what are the features you think you'll include on that stuff ? (see above)

Mounting and unmounting will be provided by a platform specific backend
(an implementation of the ThunarVolumeManager and ThunarVolume
interfaces, which need to be extended to include mount/unmount).
Removable devices (and probably network shares) will be visible in the
sidepane in every Thunar window (and probably through, an option,
available on the desktop), so you don't need to create any special files
for them at all.

The "~/Desktop as desktop" discussion is pretty much over. While I agree
that $HOME would be better suited, and ~/Desktop is really a bad idea,
there's even more confusion if we don't use ~/Desktop, as ~/Desktop is
used by nearly every other popular desktop application today. Imagine
you tell firefox to save a file to "Desktop" and you don't see that file
on the desktop later, etc.

> thanks
> ciao
> df

greets,
Benedikt