xfce4 svn snapshot

[daniele favara]

On 1/31/06, Colin McDermott <colmcd at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> I have tried both Xffm and Thunar. Thunar really needs a nice set of
> icons BTW.
>
> Why not work with rox-filer. It can mount directories that are mapped in
> fstab. It can do desktop icons. It can do everything you want except an
> explorer like tree (imho I think that a file tree confuses people more
> then it helps them. Namely because you can only write to /home /tmp and
> /var/tmp or a mounted drive). It is also stable.
>
I agree with you here, but you should even think that a new user will
expect to have it ... as explorer has it

thunar: just a file manager,
 - no (p)mount
 - (p)umount
 - no desktop icons
 - no wallpaper

xffm: much more then just a file manager, not really easy to use
(personally i don't like it)
 - mount , (no pmount)
 - umount , (no pumount)
 - desktop icons
 - no wallpaper

rox-filer: file manager, no dir tree
 - mount , (no pmount)
 - umount , (no pumount)
 - desktop icons (if -pin)
 - wallpaper (if -pin)

as one of the main app of ubuntu is pmount, i think that should be
enabled on a file manager, Benedikt told me he will add it, i don't
think it'll be ready for dapper.
A solution is to let the volume manager to make this, but there are
some issues like:

- the user boot into xubuntu, he opens the fm, he can see there are for ex..
 /dev/hda1 in /media/hda1 and /dev/hdc in /media/cdrom

with rox and xffm he can r-click and mount or umount, if i'm not wrong

he plugs an usb stick ... the volume manager pmount it (it's a
removable device), the user knows he can find new devices in /media,
he r-clicks on it and he can't mount or umount .... that's an issue
for me.

solution:

or use a file manager that doesn't have that problem, or use a file
manager that doesn't have mount features and let some other app doing
that. Thunar is fine i think. But i think it's important that the user
can have an idea of his devices, and where they are ... desktop icons
are needed.

the desktop icon app should be able to:

 - generate icons when it starts (reading from desktop files i think
it 's the best choice)
 - add new icons on the fly (for ex when an usbstick has been attached)
 - remove icons on the fly (for ex when an usbstick has been removed)
 - pop up a menu with possible actions on r-click
   * [p]mount
   * [p]umount
   *  eject
   * open fm on mount point

idesk, can be used for desktop icons and a script in ivman could
generate the needed file and Kill - Restart idesk in the way the new
icon can be added.

That is the approach i used on my project, but there are issues:

- idesk has a xlib menu
- it needs to be killed-restarted to show new icons

Redundancies:

- xfdesktop + rox-files -pin
 * two apps drawing the wallpaper

I think this is an important point, it's not just to choose one file
manager instead of one other, as it will affect the whole xubuntu
usability.