RFC: KRecentFilesAction: hide urls

[Johnathan Burchill]

On Tuesday 17 April 2007 4:12 am, you wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I agree that the current recent files menu looks quite cluttered and could
> obviously be improved.  "Hiding information is bad usability" is a
> simplified rule, and I would say showing unnecessary information distracts
> the user, makes UIs cluttered and is bad usability, too.
>
> On Mittwoch 11 April 2007, Johnathan Burchill wrote:
> > The KRecentFilesAction shows the full url path in square brackets behind
> > the short name? I'd like to hide that url and just show the short name.
> > If the same shortname is associated with more than one url, the short
> > name would be appended with a unique identifier, like (2), (3), etc.
>
> Why (2), (3) and not the path in brackets?  As I see it, you clean up the
> GUI for the case of different filenames, but hide information when it is
> important.
>
> As an interesting example/idea from another app, I have this in my .emacs:
>
>   ;; append directory names to buffers instead of foo<2> foo<3> ..
>   (require 'uniquify)
>   (setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'post-forward)
>
> Now buffers are named myclass.cpp, other.cpp, ... until I open a second
> README, when the buffers will show as README|ipython-0.8.0 and README|myapp
> (uniquify automatically appends just enough path components to allow
> discriminating the two).
>
> Now I am not sure
> a) How good that would look in the recent files menu.  (Having some short
> entries and some long ones.)
> b) Whether there is a difference between local file paths and URLs which
> make the above idea less suitable for KDE (OTOH, I am using tramp to open
> remote files in emacs, and I did not suffer from any problems from a user's
> POV). c) What usability people think about this.
>
> Another quick improvement could be to "dim" the bracketed path in the
> recent files menu in order to reduce the length of the entries.  Even
> better, I would suggest to remove the filename from the URL in brackets,
> since it is already written at the front.
>
> I made some quick mock-ups (in Gimp) for the latter two suggestions, alas
> not for the primary one:
> http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/recentfiles-current.png
> http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/recentfiles-dimmed.png
> http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/recentfiles-short.png
> http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/recentfiles-shortdimmed.pn
>g

I vote for recentfiles-shortdimmed.

Cheers,
JB