[Thunar-dev] small feature requests

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:42:28 +0200, Roberto Pariset wrote:

> Martin Hauser wrote:
> > Who says it must be gnome libs? Still, there may be a few people
> > around who like typing an 80 char line for scp every time they
> > aiming copy a few files to a remote location... i'm not one of
> > those. I agree gnome-vfs is bad, as far as i have seen it's not
> > something a filemanager like thunar should build upon. But that
> > doesn't stop anyone from getting this included in thunar otherwise,
> > does it? I think it would be really nice if thunar could handle
> > scp,sftp,ftp and maybe webdav, guess would make life a step more
> > easier.
> 
> Hehe :) To be honest, I am quite used to use the shell when it comes
> to ftp (lftp rox0r!) and ssh. That's also because there's no nice gui
> that allows you to do that. I have been a Gnome user for a while in
> the past, and I really found their ftp interface unflexible and
> limitated (just like all the rest, IMHO).
> If Thunar were to implement this, I really believe that a SendTo menu
> would make it real easy. However, it's just for sending. To
> receive... well, I guess a dual fs view, like mc, could be helpful,
> to move files between different locations. So the side pane should
> implement something like Icon View as well. Maybe it's too much.

These features don't need to be implemented in Thunar, necessarily.
Perhaps some of you remember the applications://, network:// etc.
special locations of Nautilus. These special URIs follow the typical
protocol URI scheme we all know from http:// or ftp://. So, here's how
Thunar could take up these ideas to provide FTP, SCP and whatever
support:

Thunar could (and probably will, as I know from a talk with Benny back
in March or April) implement a generic protocol URI system. For
example, there could be

 THUNAR_VFS_URI_FILE 	handling URIs starting with "/", "file://"
 THUNAR_VFS_URI_FTP  	handling URIs starting with "ftp://"
 THUNAR_VFS_URI_HTTP    handling URIs starting with "http://"
 THUNAR_VFS_URI_SMB     handling URIs starting with "smb://"
 THUNAR_VFS_URI_DESKTOP handling URIs starting with "desktop://"
 and so on ...

Now plugins could register to handle a certain URI scheme, e.g. there
could be a FTP plugin registering the THUNAR_VFS_URI_FTP scheme. This
means, all "ftp://..." URIs would be handled by this plugin which
provides e.g. a twin-pane view or a FTP shell for the 133t guys amongst
us.

Note, that these are just my ideas, the fact I talked with Benny about
them doesn't mean they will be implemented this way. He knows better
which way is the best to go than I do. But the general concept of URI
handlers might move responsibility out of Thunar and towards plugins.
As a consequence, no one would have to fear that Thunar might become
bloated.

So, this is just a message to calm you all down. This "OH NO! PLEASE
NOT GNOME!" debate is totally irrelevant - there simply are no plans to
copy the bad parts of Nautilus.

Regards,
Jannis
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