VFolders isn't a standard yet

[George]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 01:04:03AM +0100, Rik Hemsley wrote:
> > I still don't see what's ugly about a dir with 300 files, if it's a
> > system dir where no user ever needs to wander.  300 files is ugly in
> > your home directory, but not in a system directory.
> 
> On a slow machine (slow PCs still exist, and remember PDAs) you will
> notice. Using subdirs allows you to write code which reads on-demand.

In the vfolders you need to always read everything anyway since you need to
first need to read the Categories line from each .desktop before you can
decide which ones you need to read.

However, for slow PCs you can still build up a menu that will be the standard
on-disk layout.  In GNOME2 you just point the menu code at a disk location
rather then at applications:///.  So on a slow PC or a PDA you could have
some code that would take the vfolders read them and then create an on disk
classical version of the menus.

Though I don't think this is such a huge problem from what I've tested.
We've had performance problems in GNOME1 and I originally thought they were
from reading the .desktop files.  But in fact it's something different.
Reading and parsing all the desktop files is a very minor thing compared to
loading the icons, which you can still do on demand.

George

-- 
George <jirka at 5z.com>
   Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat, with a baseball bat.
                       -- Ramones