Dolphin change proposals

[Peter Penz]

Hello Todd,

For Dolphin and Konqueror related questions please use kfm-devel at kde.org. I'll 
just give very short answers to give a rough indication what I as maintainer 
of Dolphin think about your input. For further discussions please open a 
custom thread per question on kfm-devel at kde.org. Thanks!

On Sunday 10 January 2010 02:31:29 todd rme wrote:
> I have a few things I would like to try to implement for dolphin, but
> I before I get started I want to check to see whether people think
> they are good ideas or not. They are (in no particular order):
> 
> Drag and drop support for the tab bar.  Currently dropping files on a
> tab does nothing, which is inconsistent behavior.  The breadcrumb bar,
> places panel, folders panel, and folders all bring up the "copy, move,
> link" menu when you drop something on them, which is what I want to
> have the tab bar do as well.

I'm open for this idea, I think this might work well.

> "+" button on groups (when groups are visible).  This would behave the
> same as the + button on files and folders, allowing you to easily
> select and de-select whole groups.

Selecting worked already in KDE SC 4.3 by clicking on the group header, 
deselecting did not work (is a bug IMO). Due to some refactoring of 
KCategorizedView by the class maintainer done for KDE SC 4.4, also selecting 
does not work anymore. I wanted to fix this myself (see bug 221902), but a +/- 
icon is not needed IMO. I would appreciate it if you could have a look on this 
issue (it is in KCategorizedView from kdelibs).

> File count for groups.  This would just be a bit of text next to the
> group name saying how many files are present in the group.

IMO not needed. Must be clarified with the maintainer of the class (this is 
out of scope of Dolphin).

> If there is no currently-selected file, and you are hovering over a
> file, pressing "F2" will let you rename the file.

I would not accept this patch for several reasons, but I don't want to provide 
a lengthy reasoning here on kde-core-devel.

> 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.

I'd prefer that other issues with opening multiple files get fixed first (e. 
g.  selecting 100 images opening with Gwenview will open 100 Gwenview 
instances currently...).

> And maybe an actions panel, which show the "actions" right-click menu
> in a dockable panel for easier access and improved visibility.

We dropped the action panel from Dolphin in KDE 3 for some reasons for KDE 4 
and I don't want to reintroduce it again.

> I would like some feedback on which these ideas (if any) people think
> are good and should be implemented or if there are any suggestions.  I
> can't guarantee that I will be able to implement any of these, but I
> will at least try if people think they are worthwhile.

You're very welcome to contribute patches! From my experience I'd recommend to 
start with bugfixes instead of features. This makes you familiar with the 
codebase and gives a quick indication for yourself whether you are also 
willing to do the "no-fun" part of development when you need to do bug fixes 
for your custom features ;-)

> 
> -Todd
>