[patch] enhanced file properties dialog

[David Faure]

On Monday 11 October 2004 19:28, Martin Koller wrote:
> On Monday 11 October 2004 00:00, David Faure wrote:
> >
> > > In addition I show a graphical representation of the disk usage
> > > (progressbar).
> >
> > This, OTOH, I'm not too sure of. It would be a good idea in a "device"
> > properties dialog [we should probably have that, which is another topic].
> 
> Yes, of course. That would be the best.
> I'll try to integrate the bar then into the device-tab.

? There isn't always a device tab...
That's only for device .desktop files, IIRC.

> > But in the folder properties dialog, it attracts the eye, even though it's
> > not the important part of the dialog...
> 
> I see your point. But then I'm asking why the disk information is shown at 
> all?

As I said, because you want to know how much space you have "in that folder",
i.e. how much stuff you can put inside it. Also because the whole point of the Unix
mount points is to hide the notion of mountpoints and devices, so when simply
looking at directories you don't really have a "device" object where to right-click
(unlike in Windows where you can go to C:). Yes, I know there's an effort now
to actually show devices (with devices:/ or media:/). But from a given folder
one shouldn't have to figure out which device it belongs to, so having this
info in the properties dialog is useful. It's just that a percentage doesn't apply.

> > Also I feel that "97%" doesn't 
> > really tell you want you want to know, i.e. whether there's room for the
> > 100MB you want to copy in. (That's the relation to a "folder" dialog: you
> > can see how much room you have "in" that folder... but 97% doesn't apply to
> > the folder, it applies to the device.)
> 
> For a folder the information is correct, because the folder resides on the 
> device whose fillgrade you see, and therefore also the folder has the 
> possibility to fill what is left.
Yes, but 100MB is more informative than 97% (which the progressbar shows).

> For a file it is really questionable why we show the space information.
? Do we? Oh indeed. Never realized that.
I would accept a patch that changes it to only do it for directories.

> But I see another problem, which is more serious:
> When right clicking on a device icon on the desktop (e.g. my second Windows 
> partition), I expect to get the information for that device.
> Instead I get the information for the .desktop file and the free/used disc 
> space of the partition where this .desktop file is on.
> This is absolutely useless!
Yes.

> How can this be solved ?
You're looking at old-style .desktop files instead of the new-style "devices on desktop"
feature, right? So one fix is to use the latter.
Another fix would be to change konq_popupmenu.cc for .desktop files; I probably
need to do a bit of that to improve the trash's RMB at some point....

> Another issue with the folder properties:
> There is a "Meta Info" Tab which is shows size/items of the first level 
> folder-content - which should really be integrated into the first tab.
> I suggest to remove that Meta-Info completely for the folder and merge it into 
> the first one.
If you mean in general, I strongly disagree. 
MP3s and images have LOTS of metainfo entries, much more than folders, and wouldn't fit.

If you mean for directories: if all the info provided by the metainfo is already
there (or can easily be made to be), then we could hide the metainfo tab indeed.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).