[Thunar-dev] Some ideas :)

["François K."]

Hi all :)

First, I would like to thank everyone for the work. Thunar is my 
favorite file manager. As a consequence, I would be glad to help it.
I had some ideas using Thunar which I thought they could be interesting. 
The aim of this mail is to present you these ideas.
I think it could be interesting to talk a bit about them and share 
points of view :)

Also, I apologize if some were already made/studied but I'm new here, heh :)


1. Copy Manager :
-----------------

So, the first idea is to have a kind of "copy manager", just like the 
download manager we have in Mozilla Firefox.
I often copy or move several files. There are generally 2 ways of doing it :

- I select all the files and copy/paste them.
I have one window with a progress bar for all files I selected.
In that case, we just have one window and only control on the whole 
process. If you want to cancel the copying process for one file, you can't.
The good thing is that you have just one window :)

- If I want to keep control on each copying process, I have to select 
one file after another.
The annoying thing with this method is that I have one window for each 
file...

The idea is to combine both systems : having one window with the list of 
files you're copying/moving with a progress status for each one AND for 
the whole process.
Also, having some control possibilities such as stop, pause or 
continue... That would be great. If one file is more important than 
another, you can pause the others and continue them after.
I don't know if it's possible (again, this is an idea :) ). If you don't 
see what I mean, have a look at Firefox's download manager, this will 
give you an idea :)


2. Location bar :
-----------------

As I'm very interested in computing, I tested M$ Vista a few days ago (I 
like to discover new things, new features, new ideas..).
I don't really like their new explorer which is, for me, very very 
complicated. Nevertheless, there is a great thing in this explorer : the 
location bar.
It combines the advantage of "the button system" and the "text field 
system". I think Thunar could use a system like this one rather than the 
option in the menu bar.
For those who haven't tested it (I understand them :D ), the bar is like 
a text field but you can click on words. For example you have : 
/home/user/projects/thunar
And you can click on "home","user","projects" and "thunar". Clicking on 
it will drop you in the directory, just like the "button system".
But if you click in the blank area of the text field (after thunar for 
example), you can type in what you want. You don"t have to constantely 
switch between both options.


OK, that's all for now, let me know what you think about those ideas.
I'm sorry for my english (Im french). I was better a few years ago but I 
miss practice.


Cheers,

François

PS : If someone feels patient enough to guide me and help me, I can try 
to develop those ideas. I know algorithmcs and I'm used to develop in 
PHP, XML and Java. So with help and time, I think I could play a bit 
with C or C++ :)