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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: I'd like it, but...
From:       "Robert Hagemann" <rhagemann () psipenta ! com>
Date:       2000-03-02 7:32:56
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Hi to everybody,

since a couple of weeks, I have the following idea in mind, and maybe it
could adress the cited issue.

The desktop files for devices give us the means to have  an item with 2
states and each state is
associated with an icon. AFAIK this behaviour is hard-coded: The two states
are mounted/unmounted,
the check which state the item is in is done by some system-call to "mount"
or "stat".
We could make this behaviour configurable. The properties dialog prompts
you for the count of
states, a description and an icon for each state and how (and when) to
check, in which state the item
is in, currently.
This way, the item is the directory, and the states are: "empty, with one
item, with many items".
The icons will reflect this and the check-up is some kind of "ls -1|wc".

Other items, beside devices and directories, that has come to my mind were
users
(state logged in/not logged in), well-known (XML) documents (state
draft/final),
symbolic links (state dangling/correct), etc.

Ciao,
Robert Hagemann
.





Robert Crawford <crawford@kloognome.com> on 01.03.2000 17:43:24

Please respond to kde-devel@kde.org

To:   kde-devel@kde.org
cc:    (bcc: Robert Hagemann/PSIPENTA)

Subject:  Re: I'd like it, but...




On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 01:09:06PM -0300, Marcos Dione wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Robert Crawford wrote:
> >  The idea is to have "piles" of documents as part of the GUI.
> > A pile's icon gives some information has to how many documents are
> > in it -- none, one or two, many. Dropping documents onto the
> > pile adds them to it. Clicking on the pile brings up a list of its
> > contents and lets the user select one to open.
> >  I would love this, especially if the piles looked different
> > according to their contents -- stacks of paper for most things, but
> > reels of film (or videocassettes) for animations, stacks of CDs for
> > MP3 files...
>    can't you do the same creating a dir, moving the files to it, and
> giving the dir, using the properties, the icons you cite: stacks of
> paper, reels of film, etc?

     That would give cues as to content, but not as to volume
(number of documents in the pile). It also wouldn't let you "thumb"
through the items in the pile. The implementation could just be a
directory with certain items in its .desktop file.

     It's an academic discussion, anyway. Chalk it up as "another
thing software patents have killed".

--
                              crawford@iac.net

"The bullets are just his way of saying 'Keep it down, I've got a
hangover.'"

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