"Spatial" mode?

[poptones]

Wander Boessenkool Wrote: 
> On Thu, 2004-12-23 at 18:18 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> And a tip for everybody who prefers spatial, but occasionally
> needs/wants browser:
> 
> create a launcher that executes 'nautilus --browser', launch it and
> voila: instant browser-mode nautilus without having to change a single
> setting
> 

Not good enough. Better is to have it on the right click menu (as it
already is) but I want to be able to make it replace the "open and
close" function on the middle button. 

Two other things would make spatial really excellent. If I can ever
figure out how to drive gnome with python I'll add them myself, maybe
someone reading this will already have done it and I won't have to
reinvent the wheel...

1) have a pop-down panel that is activated when I click a certain place
on the status bar. That way it's always incredibly easy to perform quick
command line functions on the folder you're working in without having to
switch attention.

Of course, for this to be really effective something has to be done
about the speed of nautilus. Moving 500 files from one folder to
another using nautilus is ridiculously slow. Even REMOVING those files
(not copying to trash, but just wiping them out) can take minutes as
nautilus updates the thumbnails and refreshes itself over and over and
over again, one at a time. 

1b) Wait.. even slicker would be just to have it interact in a popup.
That way it doesn't take up scren realestate and non-power users
wouldn't even have to be aware of it. In the same way we type ctrl-L to
get a url dialog, maybe have ctrl-T popup an abbreviated command line
window. Type in your commands, press enter and the popup disappears as
the nautilus window is updated to reflect the operation you just
performed. 

Make it interact with nautilus, so you could (for example) type "ls
*joe*" and it would only show objects in the folder named with the word
"joe."  type "grep joe" and it only shows objects containing the word
joe. (Yes, I know this sorta sounds like beagle, but I want it built
into every folder.) When you're done type ctrl-U to reset any filters
you added ala grep, ls, etc.

2) I want to be able to have certain presets for folders. IOW I have
all my mp3 folders pop up at a certain place on the screen with certain
characteristics. I have all my jpeg folders do the same, and my movie
folders. They don't have the same presets (for example, jpegs take up
half the desktop giving me a nice thumbnail view of 50-60 files at a
time, gqview opens on the other half when I click one). I want ot be
able to right-click a folder and tell it "this folder is a jpeg folder"
and it automatically updates the metadata so it opens in the right
place, the right view, ight size, etc.

2b) Even better, fix nautilus so it's not so doggone slow then it can
automatically track folder contents. Ie any folder containing all mp3s
automatically gets an mp3 emblem and the size/position field updated.
Any folder containing all jpegs gets similar treatment with the
respective picture emblem. Ditto for videos.

I think the second won't be too hard. It's likely not practical right
now (because nautilus is sooo slow already and I'm not enough of a wiz
to contribute there) but I think a cron task might do well on the job
each night. Updating metafiles is pretty simple.

The pop-down (or pop-up) command line would be awesome, though. 

Yes, that's what I want. 

Hmm... maybe this should go to the nautilus list...


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