[Thunar-dev] Actions extensions in File Managers - Draft 0.12

[Pierre Wieser]

----- "PCMan" <pcman.tw at gmail.com> wrote:

> This have important use case but only if the spec supports showing
> menu items in submenus only.
> For example, if you want to create a "Subversion" support for
> currently selected files, it's reasonable that you want to put all
> supported subversion operations in a submenu since putting them all
> in
> level 0 screws up the UI.
> 
> If this is the context menu of selected files:
> 
> Open
> Cut
> Copy
> Paste
> -----------
> Subversion  # a submenu
>         Add
>         Commit
>         Remove
>         Diff
>         ....
> Properties
> 
> In this case, we need to add a desktop file for Subversion menu.
> Then, we need to add actions for all these items in "Subversion"
> submenu.
> Then, imaging what will happen.
> All profiles of "Add", "Commit", "Diff", and all other desktops are
> checked to see if they have profiles applied to currently selected
> files. It's natural to check whether currently selected files are in
> svn repo. So you need to do this check for every submenu item "Add",
> "Commit", "Remove"...etc. This is *very* inefficient. Besides, after
> that, you get this result according to the spec:
> 
> Open
> Cut
> Copy
> Paste
> -----------
> Subversion  # a submenu
>         Add
>         Commit
>         Remove
>         Diff
>         ....
> Add
> Commit
> Remove
> Diff
> ...
> Properties
> 
> All submenu items are added to level 0, too since they all applied to
> currently selected files.
> With profiles for menus and Target=Submenu; this is completely
> solved.
> We check if currently selected files are in a svn repo in profile of
> the "Subversion" menu.
> If the files are not in svn repo, show another submenu which only
> contains "Add".
> For example:
> 
> [Desktop Entry]
> Type=Menu
> Name=Subversion
> Profiles=InSVN;NotInSVN;
> 
> [X-Action-Profile In SVN]
> ShowIfTrue=a-command-testing-if-files-are-in-svn-repo
> ItemList=svn-commit;svn-remove;svn-diff;other-svn-commands...;
> 
> [X-Action-Profile NotInSVN] # if the files are not in the svn repo
> ShowIfTrue=!a-command-testing-if-files-are-in-svn-repo # actually
> this
> is not needed if the first profile doesn't applied, this profile will
> be chosen instead.
> ItemList=svn-add;
> 
> So we can easily provide different menus for files in svn repo and
> not.
> With this, the command testing if files are in svn repo is only run
> "once" for the whole menu, not every single submenu item as the
> current spec suggests. This greatly improve the efficiency. This is a
> real world use case.
> 
> Target=Submenu is needed IMO since without this, all items will be
> added to level 0 then submenus becomes useless at all.
> 
> These problems are found when we tried to implement the spec. If more
> examples are needed to convince you, I can provide more.
> 
> Thanks

Humm..

I have another con argument.

To take back your example and extend it, we can view that grouping actions
in a menu when they are relative to the same sort of target (here, svn)
is some sort of user-friendly optimization, even if they did not have been
created by the same designer. 

It so becomes easy to share all svn actions, in a common menu (say 'svn'),
as a set of .desktop files.

Mixing in this same menu other actions which do not have the same target will probably not make easier the share of these actions...

(I'm afraid my english becomes worst at each sentence :( - Sorry...)