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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    Re: view "follows" (tree)view
From:       Michael Reiher <michael.reiher () gmx ! de>
Date:       1999-06-29 22:09:47
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Waldo Bastian wrote:
> 
> Simon Hausmann wrote:
> 
> > Now the problems:
> >
> > 1) I'm not sure whether we should make this a general feature,
> >    meaning that the parent can be any kind of view or whether
>      we should restrict this on the treeview.
> 
> >From a technical point of view... if it is not too hard: Yes
> See also my next point.
I can only agree!

> 
> > 2) *How* should the user be able to select such a binding?
> >    The problem here is also: Would be menu entries like
> >    "follow view on the left/right" sufficient?
> >
> > GUI design gurus, please speak up! :-) We need an easy way
> > (for the user) to say: "Hey, make this one follow that one" or
> > "Hi, please follow this treeview" .
> > I think this is difficult in a multiple-view environment like
> > Konqy.
> 
> Konqy can do a lot but it doesn't mean we should let the user
> do all this. (Unless he really really wants to)
> 
> [SNIP]
> > I would really like to see such a feature, but I have no
> > clue how I as user would like to create this binding.
> 
> As a user, you don't.
> 
> Let me explain:
> 
> Konqy has great flexibility in how its views behave. Basically
> you can configure 25 features independently of each other.
> 
> That is great. But it isn't user friendly. I don't want to spend
> 5 days configuring my filebrowser before it does something
> usefull.
> 
> The views should do something logical, smart and ergonomic all
> by themselves.
> 
> Perhaps we should have "view-configuration profiles". That means
> that a user can select a profile and that konqy shows a set of
> views which are linked to each other in some way. E.g. the
> "copy files profile". Which shows two directories from which
> you can exchange/copy files.
> 
> Or the "browse images profile" which shows a directory in one
> view and images (using a kview-part) in the other.
> 
> Of course there is an option to create these profiles all by your
> self and hack 25 views which all show something different but
> the main idea is that we provide a set of profiles which are just
> very easy to use and which can selected with a single click.
> 
I strongly agree. I had a similar idea some time ago as well. An
additional thing I thought of was that you can assign an icon to each
profile. That would make it easier to identify your current web, file
manager or whatever window in the taskbar. And there could then be a
dynamic toolbar of you favorite profiles Netscape-like down right in the
statusbar. As a real toolbar it would IMHO waste too much screenspace.

> There shouldn't be a "delete view" or "add view" menu option.
> That is much too dificult to manage. Click the web-browser
> profile and you get one big view with KHTML. Click the web-author
> profile and you get 3 views: one with the directory, one with
> KHTML and one with the output from web-lint.
Hmm, here I not sure about. If you want quickly a new view you´d have to
create a new profile before. Otherwise you can just select split and
you´re done.
Ahhh, and another thing is, how will the user define a profile? IMHO the
easiest way would be to let him configure his konqy like it´s right now
and then just do something like "Save current Layout as profile". Plus
of course an profile management dialog. Otherwise we´d need an extra
editor or an editor mode or something like that.
> 
> We can make a big repository of profiles and let the user drag
> the profiles he wants to use to the toolbar.
see above

> 
> To be user friendly KDE needs to be smart, it should offer the
> user what it wants without the user needing to explain every
> detail. (E.g. the user should just be able to push a single
> button to rearrange the whole browser for a given usage)
> 
> But we don't must outsmart the user. KDE can never predict 100%
> what a user wants. So we must leave the user the option to
> correct KDE's smart behaviour when he doesn't like it.
> (E.g. The user should be able to edit the profiles to his own
> taste)
> 
> The priority is also very important. 1st smart. 2nd configurable.
> The user shouldn't NEED to configure the bloody thing. He hasn't
> bought a computer to configure his filemanager (we KDE developers
> on the other hand....) He wants to browse the web... and then
> view his collection of photos... and then install a new game
> he bought... He only wants to reorganize the way his views work
> when he is a) very bored or b) they annoy the hell out of him.
These are true words. I can just agree:)

But there is still some other thing. There is the problem that if the
user has several views open and we want to provide the possibility e.g.
to copy/move via F5/F6 he somehow would have to select source and
destination before. I didn´t come to a good solution. 
Same was with the tree. Which tree should a view follow? In my eyes the
only choise was to somehow reenable the general directory tree from old
kfm.
But as recently that one guy came up with the great idea how that amiga
filemanager solved the source/destination problem(with a toggleable
button, perhaps we could put that in the view header?) I suddenly got
it. The same way the user could select a view to be followed(i.e.
parent) and a view to follow(i.e. child) and that´s it.
Defaults can of course be set in the profiles

Greets

Michael

> 
> Cheers,
> Waldo

-- 
Michael Reiher  
     Student at Dresden University of Technology
          Department of Computer Science
               email: michael.reiher@gmx.de

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