Nautilus Sidebar

[Joao Inacio]

On 7/1/06, Who <mailforwho at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have just written up a new spec about extending the Nautilus Sidebar
> and I'd love some feedback on it:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NautilusSidebarExtensions
>
> To give you a taster:
>
> "This specification proposes an improved sidebar panel in Nautilus
> that uses different engines (so as to avoid adding dependencies to
> Nautilus) to display metadata, relevant information about files, and
> actions that can be performed on them. It could list related documents
> (using Tracker or Beagle), allow editing of metadata, show detailed
> previews of files or add links to relevant web searches or pages in
> the history - semantically linking all of a user's data together."
>
> In my 'implementation' section I have outlined (below the caveat that
> I am an inexperienced developer, and that if these ideas suck I'd like
> to be told (politely if possible :P ) why so I can make suggestions
> better in the future) a system where Nautilus exposes a certain amount
> of information about the _currently selected file_ to an 'engines'
> that are listening. The engine then formulates lists of data based on
> queries, file operations and settings defined in a configuration file
> (with an engine being able to accept multiple configuration files, but
> the specific nature of any configuration file means it must be unique
> to an engine). The engine then passes the generated data/list back to
> Nautilus that handles the display.
>
> The way it is broken down reduces the dependencies that need to be
> added to Nautilus and also allows coding of 'engines' by the teams
> that make the software the engine is to use (I.E Tracker team make the
> tracker engine). Users can then share an compare their configuration
> files, further distributing the development load. The main development
> initially would need to be in the 'applet container' inside Nautilus.
>
> Unfortunately I am not nearly capable of doing that yet, so this email
> is as much an appeal for some interested developers as it is a
> description of an idea! The idea  is useless without people to code it
> (and note - I have no real attachment to the design, just the
> configurable end result)
>
> Happy reading :)
>
> Who
>
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>

Great spec, makes all the sense to me, and i'd be a happy(er) person
to see it on Edgy 8)

-- 
João Inácio
http://www.jcinacio.com