New features in Rodent Gamma

[Edscott Wilson Garcia]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

El 09/08/11 07:55, Harold Aling escribió:
>
> I just built myself a Rodent (r4945) and though I really see
> potential, there are some quirks that will prevent Rodent from
> becoming my main filemanager.
>
> * GVFS support(!)

At this point I like to recall the Perl motto, TIMTOWTDI. Using GVFS
would entail bringing in 33 extra dependencies on my non-gnome gentoo
box. And what for? Let's mention the main two issues I see at this moment.

1. To access stuff on SMB shares I  prefer the xfsamba plugin approach
(available in xffm from 4.0 through 4.5 but not yet rewritten
thread-safe for Rodent). The xfsamba plugin does not hide master
browser information, which is how this protocol works. It's OK to hide
master browser information from users who don't care, but advanced
users will want to have all the information when trying to debug SMB
connection problems.

2. To access stuff on SFTP hosts. Yes. This is the top priority item I
plan to work on after Gamma is released. But the idea approach the
problem with a plugin, bringing in no extra dependencies. The great
thing with plugins is that you don't  have to reserve memory for them
on program startup and you never require that memory if you never load
the plugin. GVFS, OTH, is a library. The OS will reserve memory for
this even if you never load it. That's a bummer. Especially with all
those dependencies.

Any other good reason to use GVFS?

> * Other iconset than the rest of my system?

Maybe, but maybe not. If you configure with the --enable-iconsplugin
option set to "no", Rodent falls back to the stock gtk icons (or
remove the plugin if already installed). Some desktops, like gnome,
replace stock gtk-icons with their own. Look at this screenshot:
http://xffm.foo-projects.org/screenshots/settings-desktop-3.png
 here you can see the gtk-icons defined in a gnome desktop (ubuntu
10.4). The drawback to this option is that the icon set is quite
limited. But there's another option.

The second option is changing the Rodent icon theme to whatever icon
theme you like. In xffm-4.5 this was as easy as selecting the desired
theme. The problem here is that each and every icon in Rodent is
customizable, so that the system wide customization file for alternate
themes require a maintainer. And the only icon theme I have time to
maintain is the Rodent theme.

So, if you want to change themes you would have to edit the icon
plugin files and change the references to "Rodent" to the name of your
theme of choice. Then the rodent-mime application can be used to
customize each and every icon to you liking with the new theme.

Once alternate icon themes have maintainers, reinstating the icon
theme selection widget is a breeze. Or even simpler:
gtk_icon_theme_get_default() and fallback to Rodent if not a
maintained icon theme.

If you or anyone else has the time and desire to add support for
another svg icon theme, I'm all for it and will help you along the
way. Otherwise, remember that Rodent's name comes from the Rodent icon
theme, developed specifically for Xfce 4 by Francois Le Clainche. If
you wonder why people say Xfce is a "project with chronically lacking
manpower" ask yourself how motivating it is to have hard work thrown
away.

> * Colors that aren't present in my theme? (green hover?)

Yeah, I did think that green was a bit rasta, but then I'm not a
designer. If you have any other color which looks better I'll be very
glad to use it instead. After Gamma release, if enough users request
this color be configurable, it shall be so. But if no one has any
better suggestion than rasta-green, then rasta-green it shall be.

> * Megabytes/mebibyte/etc. What standard is used? Why is a file in
> Rodent 15MB -vs- 16MB in bash/ls? Note: 1 megabyte(MB) equals 1000
> kilobytes (KB) and 1 mebibyte (MiB) equals 1024 kibibytes (KiB)

Thank you for this clarification.  Rodent is using MiB but tagging it
as MB. This will be corrected for release (I don't have any particular
preference for MB or MiB, but if bash uses MB, that's probably good).

> * Set zoom level with ctrl-mousewheel

Good idea. It had not occurred to me. I will explore the possibility
to include it in Gamma release.

> * global zoom level

I had thought of it, but rather as a "default" zoom level since each
visited "path" recalls the user set zoom level. Is a "default" zoom
level what you had in mind or using an absolute zoom level for all
"paths"?
> * And then there are a few other things, but I guess they will be
> dealt with over time...
>
> Overall, I'm quite impressed, but not yet convinced...

Even if you are not convinced, I greatly appreciate the time you took
to download, compile and test Gamma-unstable. Rest assured your
comments did not fall on deaf ears.

Thanks!

- -- 

cheers!

Edscott
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJOQZHCAAoJELQNbyGagI+M86cH/jJVSdEXplL7GhlIIHFxTe7g
OOtLq8ICC6Av7iDnFnzu7NxZv1ooXwyl32Ins0EHg3TJThAkNDFVYazkAaDFwYoI
asNcdW/u6ji0Z7ax7876mKWGjKupIWXQPw7jz30/i28cqg1BqmaoirUdkI+umKVB
oEe8ywn7eI9St6vJXA9nKXYorVpIHPi2L+TzO6RMCww5I+kqToXMkEOZPuQkedQC
wbxb67lVyyp8BHa/cL2qQ8hr7rFJRfIKgYZRamsGZrMugoU3QV5w80+eLT2oRbQ4
tN7ymi6MVmFWIz5ZbI4ZPE73DOfd5zPj3rx5oveePXgsQF9N6yrKu17FJSxdtYA=
=bNLg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----