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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Thank you for the highly
analytical email! I will try to answer each question in parts : )</font><br>
<pre wrap=""><i>How does this idea improve on hold Ctrl, then click files? I.e.
can/does it apply to multiple disjoint folder trees at the same time?</i>
</pre>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">In my opinion and personal
experience, ctrl+click has always been a pretty unintuitive and
unfriendly way of selecting non-contiguous subsets of files. It's
stressful to keep one finger always on the ctrl key and the
functionality is very limited as it only works for the current
level of the directory. This idea does exactly that, it works on
disjoint folder trees at the same time. Plus, there is no stress
about accidentally lifting the finger from the ctrl key and losing
the entire selection : )</font><br>
<pre wrap=""><i>Does this mode have special provisions for navigating in the one panel
so you can easily select file (sub)sets from disjoint directory trees
without setting up the file view as an expanded tree view first?</i>
</pre>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I am not entirely sure if
I have understood the question, but operations can be performed on
the File Tray view as well across multiple disjoint directory
trees. I'm not quite clear on the part of "setting up the file
view as an expanded tree view first" however.</font><br>
<pre wrap=""><i>Would it be a good idea and feasible to integrate generic context menu
actions/capabilities so you could use it not just for copy/paste but
also for creating archives, redoing file permissions, vcs actions,
etc.?</i></pre>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><i>
</i>Absolutely! I hadn't thought about this too far beyond
copy/paste, but it makes a lot of sense. This panel will inherit a
lot of functionality from Dolphin so it would be a great idea to
incorporate commonly used features that temporarily involve files
from a lot of different directories (such as archiving) together.
Furthermore, all file operations will use Dolphin's already well
developed functions for moving files. This includes the view for
file operations which Dolphin uses.<br>
<br>
The ASCII mockup is pretty spot on for what I intended. The idea
of only using collapsible file trees in the top level is a great
idea! I was thinking that maybe there could be an "Remove"
file/folder option in the toolbar for the panel with a
corresponding right click context menu option but overlays on the
files/folders icons would be much easier to use. <br>
<br>
Again, thank you very much for the comprehensive feedback and very
useful suggestions!<br>
</font><i>
</i><br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Saturday 26 December 2015 01:29 PM,
Johan Ouwerkerk wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAAcD2ipy8iecOCQBgbTB1OaEdMnK0JCJheHs0j9ZxYhBWxyoLA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Arnav Dhamija <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:arnav.dhamija@gmail.com"><arnav.dhamija@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi everyone
I am a first year computer science undergraduate at the university and I
have a project idea I want to implement in the Dolphin file manager.
Response from the Dolphin team has been positive and they have suggested
bringing the issue towards the usability side to create an easy to use GUI
to make this happen. My idea is as follows:
Trays Panel Extension for the Dolphin File Manager for improving GUI file
selection operations
Selecting multiple files in any file manager for copying and pasting has
never been a pleasant experience, especially if the files are in a
non-continuous order. Often, when copying files between devices we might
find that we need to select only a subset of the required files we have
selected and this leads to the unwieldy operation of removing files from our
selection. Of course, the common workaround is to create a new folder and to
put all the items in but this is a very inefficient process and can be very
slow if large files need to be copied between devices.
My solution to this problem is to add a panel/view in Dolphin where the
links to files and folders can be temporarily saved for a session. The files
and folders are "staged" on this panel. Hence, the user can add folders and
files from several different directories to this panel and can then
collectively perform actions on all the items in the tray such as copy,
paste, cut, upload images in selection to Facebook, upload files to Dropbox,
etc. This makes complex file operations easy by staging the operation before
performing it.
Files can be added to this tray by using a right-click context menu option
or by using the mouse scroll click or drag and drop. As an additional
option, the session for the File Tray Panel can be saved for later use.
My initial idea was to have another split view mode with its button in the
toolbar in Dolphin. It will function similarly to the existing split view
but with one half of the screen dedicated to the "Files tray". This would
make it neatly integrated with Dolphin's existing toolset and it would make
dragging and dropping easy. Dolphin maintainer Emmanuel Pescosta suggested
using Plasmoids to make the project more cohesive with KDE and to make it
usable with multiple applications (eg Gwenview).
I would be much obliged to hear feedback from the usability and visual
design team on this and suggestions for a cleaner UI. Thanks!
--
arnav dhamija
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Not a usability team member but kind of intrigued by your proposal nonetheless:
How does this idea improve on hold Ctrl, then click files? I.e.
can/does it apply to multiple disjoint folder trees at the same time?
Does this mode have special provisions for navigating in the one panel
so you can easily select file (sub)sets from disjoint directory trees
without setting up the file view as an expanded tree view first?
Would it be a good idea and feasible to integrate generic context menu
actions/capabilities so you could use it not just for copy/paste but
also for creating archives, redoing file permissions, vcs actions,
etc.?
Should it be possible to trigger this via Ctrl + click'ing files, as
well as the other shortcuts mentioned?
As for UI would it be a good idea to have a toolbar in the panel
corresponding with common context menu actions one might use the new
panel for?
Basically I'm thinking something like this ASCII art mockup
(navigation & file view panel on the left, staging area on the right):
____________________________________________________________
</path/foo> |[ Copy ] [Move To] [Archive] [ Attributes][View
mode] [...] <- ... is like burger menu button, for less common actions
that most non technical people wouldn't bother with
... | >- <selected/folder/1>
... | ... - <selected file1>
... | v+ selected/but/not/expanded/folder/2
... | >+ also-staged/not/selected/folder/3
... | .... + foo
... | v- not/selected/and/not/expanded/folder/4
... | >+ more/stuff/in/folder/5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where +/- are normal selection overlay icons.
The staging panel probably should have various view modes the same way
as the normal file view has except that at the top level it should
always be like the tree mode.
By this I meant that you can put it in big icons, small icons, list,
tree with alphabetic headings view mode for the child items of the
selected folders, but that at the top level it's always an expandable
list of selected folders in which the selections were made before
staging them. (Hence the >
Additionally, ideally I think it should be possible to use normal file
selection mode in the staging panel so you can un-stage multiple files
selected by accident also; hence the need for +/- overlay icons as
well.
... Personally I think your panel idea could make for a really
interesting and powerful file management feature!
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<font face="arial">arnav dhamija</font></div>
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