Dolphin change proposals

[todd rme]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 1:43 AM, Parker Coates
<parker.coates at kdemail.net> wrote:
> Personally, this strikes me as overkill. Drag and hover already opens
> the tab which is a lot more flexible as it allows you to drop on
> subfolders. Others might disagree.

First of all, by that argument we shouldn't have the menu when we are
dropping on a folder (which you also enter after a short delay).

Second, as I said, the behavior is inconsistent.  For every other
representation of a folder in dolphin, dropping on it brings up a
menu.  That is at least 4 other places.  Only the behavior of tabs is
different.  I think this sort of inconsistent behavior is confusing.

Finally, it takes a lot longer to do things the way you describe way.
The "short delay" isn't that short, then you have to maneuver your
mouse back into the folder area, then you have to find and maneuver
your mouse to a blank area on the folder (this is not always an easy
task depending on the size and spacing of your icons).  And in the
end, you still end up with the menu.  What's more, you are now in the
new tab, meaning you have to then navigate back to the previous tab.
All of this takes a significant amount of time compared to just
dropping it right on the tab, especially if you are trying to move
files to multiple different tabs.

And before you ask, when you have a split view open in the destination
tab, the active side will be the one to receive the files.  This
should not be unexpected behavior, since the tab's title is also the
name of the active tab.  That being said, if people think it would be
better I might try giving people the option of sending the file to
either or both of the views (I don't know how much harder that would
be).

> I think this is a bad idea. Across KDE actions are applied to selected
> items, not hovered ones. If you did this, then why not
> hover-and-delete or hover-and-copy or hover-and-enter-to-open, etc.
> What would the benefit be?

I see how this is inconsistent behavior, but maybe that should be the
rule generally?  That is outside of my ability at this point, though.
The reason I specifically mentioned renaming is simply because I have
often wished I didn't have to click something in order to rename, I
have never had that thought for other actions.  It is also low-risk,
because F2 is hard to hit by accident and if someone does so nothing
will happen unless they then type and then hit enter, and a simple esc
will cancel anything they have done.

As for the benefit, it is quicker and easier.

>> If you select multiple files of different types, then right-click it
>> will have an "open with default applications" or something like that,
>> and all the files will then be opened with their own default
>> application.
>
> Do you have an example use case?

Sure.  For instance, say you have a folder with several pdf files for
documentation and several cpp and h files for source code.  You want
the code open in kate so you can work on it and the pdf's open in
okular because you need to refer back to some of the more obscure
aspect of the api.  Currently this would take at least 2 actions
depending on how you do it (dolphin isn't very good at detecting when
multiple files with different extensions are all opened by the same
program by default, a bug I was planning to fix).

A similar example is writing a paper and having pdf's of references
opened at the same time, or a text document and a spreadsheet.

All of these would currently require two different open actions.  I
don't see why it would be a bad thing to let users open them all at
one time.



What about the other ideas?  I am not sure whether the lack of
comments indicates approval, ambivalence, or uncertainty.