[Thunar-dev] `thumbnails' for folders

[Erlend Davidson]

Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> "natan yellin" <aantny at gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> -Natan On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 11:02 PM, Yuzem <yuzem3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Hello, I would like to know if this idea
>>> <http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16240/> can be
>>> implemented. There are some screenshots to illustrate it. As it
>>> says there, it should be very easy to implement since it uses the
>>> same mechanism of file thumbnailing.
>>>       
>> There was a discussion about something similar a few months back.
>> See http://theesylum.com/2008/09/25/making-icons-more-useful/
>>     
>
> Here's another idea, of a somewhat different sort:
>
>     http://scribblethink.org/Work/VisualIDs/visualids.html
>
> I think that they've identified the heart of the problem, and
> developed a solution, pretty brilliantly.
The original post was concerned with thumbnails on folders, indicating a
music album or photograph album lies beneath.  This feature is arguably
a must for Thunar, as it can be proven to be so useful.  I'm not sure
about this but I think Benny said folder thumbnails might be possible
with gvfs (can anybody confirm this?).

The VisualID idea is good.  I have actually read about the general idea
before.  An example use-case where I think it would be extremely useful
is with the mass of extension-less files we sometimes deal with in
Linux.  I do find the idea of doodles for files a bit ugly.  I think
using emblems automatically might be more helpful.

What do people think of the idea of thumbnails for text files?  This can
be done with text2gif and while it doesn't make the file readable it
would achieve the same goal as VisualID.