[Thunar-dev] A few issues with Thunar volume management

[Denís Fernández Cabrera]

2008/5/13 Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org>:
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 08:27:45AM +0000, Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>  > Denís Fernández Cabrera wrote:
>  > > Hello, everyone.
>  > >
>  > > I have been using Thunar for a while, and I think by far that it is
>  > > the best file manager out there --- it's fast, it's simple, and it
>  > > does what it must.
>  > >
>  > > But I have a problem managing volumes with several partitions in
>  > > Thunar, using the automatic volume management provided: I have a 512MB
>  > > external HD with three partitions, which get automounted whenever I
>  > > plug it in. But:
>  > >
>  > > - Whenever I unmount one of the partitions, the other ones get
>  > > unmounted too (actually, all the HD). The partition I unmounted
>  > > disapears from the location sidebar in Thunar, but not the other ones.
>  > > - If I click on one of the non-unmounted partitions, Thunar will
>  > > remount it *and* the previously unmounted partition will appear again
>  > > in the sidebar.
>  >
>  > Yes, that's the expected behavior. Tho, it could indeed be improved.
>
>  Yes, even if it clutters a bit the interface, I still think that umounting a
>  partition is not exactly the same thing as ejecting a device, and thus it
>  could deserve an independant command.

I think that actually connected disks and mounted partitions should be
displayed differently by Thunar --- one good idea might be to show the
disk entry upon connection, with a structure not unlike the file tree,
where partitions are child nodes hanging from the connected disk.
Verbi gratia:

+ Disk
    |- Partition 1
    |- Partition 2

Etc.

Another thing that would improve the usability of Thunar would be to
display some sort of "eject/unmount" icon, so that a disk or a
partition can be unmounted without needing to resort to
right-clicking. In general, I think that the way MacOS X's finder does
it is quite nice (it displays a small eject symbol next to the entry
of the mounted partition in the side-panel).

This button, by the way, would also be a good indicator of wether a
partition is mounted or not --- because I think that a connected disk
should always display its partitions to the user.

As for automount, I'd say that all partitions are mounted (or
attempted to) by default, but that only one new window is opened --- a
window showing the contents of the mounted disk.

A small "eject" button near the entry of the moutned disk could also
act as a mass-unmount for all the partitions, which would be unmounted
before the disk is ejected.

I feel that my explanation is actually adding more confusion than
anything... I'll make a mockup. An image is worth a thousand words (or
so they say):
http://denis.ceibes.org/var/mockup.png

Denís.




>  Btw, xfce4-places-plugin can do just that (it umounts without ejecting), so
>  one can use it to umount, and use thunar for eject. It means using two
>  "applications", but it's still a working workaround.
>
>  Cheers,
>  --
>  Yves-Alexis
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>  Thunar-dev mailing list
>  Thunar-dev at xfce.org
>  http://foo-projects.org/mailman/listinfo/thunar-dev
>



-- 
Denís Fernández Cabrera
mailto://denis@ceibes.org
http://gatonegro.ceibes.org