Review Request: Device notifier: show mounted device and path

[Aaron J. Seigo]

> On Oct. 8, 2012, 9:52 a.m., Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > any application which expects the user to access files on disk but does not provide a clear representation of mounted / removable devices is broken. there's no point in degrading our own primary UI for such fixable brokenness. can you provide a (short :) list of any such broken applications which are high-profile / in common use?
> 
> Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>     ah, and i should also add that tooltips on items in popup windows as it leads to a matryoshka doll effect that is most inelegant visually, so we try to avoid such things unless there is a very good reason for them.
> 
> Jonathan Marten wrote:
>     I think too that nested popups/tooltips look inelegant, but since it was Jacopo's suggestion I though it may be at least worth trying it out...
>     
>     In my experience hardly any non-KDE applications are able to show or control the mounting of removable devices - most of them stick to the hopeless Gnome file selector, and not all of them can be made to work well with KDE integration.  Certainly in my daily use neither mozilla, libreoffice/openoffice, gimp or googleearth identify removable devices.  Inkscape is the only major application that at least tries.  They are indeed broken (by design), but they are unlikely to be fixed before the heat death of the universe.
> 
> Jacopo De Simoi wrote:
>     My point was rather to stuff that information in some --already present-- tooltip, such as the one appearing hovering over the capacity bar or the device icon. 
>     But yes this is indeed still visually unpleasant. Besides, I agree with Aaron about creating some “Technical info” pane with all this information, which could be triggered by context menu.
>     I do not want to clutter the ui any further. It's already pretty full.
>     
>     Cheers

Mozilla and L/O-Office both use the KDE provided file dialogs here, and that is because I am using an OS that does good integration (openSUSE in this case; though certainly not the only one). Google Earth also ought to if it is using Qt with the platform plugin support. GIMP, well, lost causes abound I suppose. but it is not nearly the horror show that it may seem to be. And yes, such applications are broken by design, and no, I won't lower Plasma to their standards. We've been through this same sort of situation before: when we bow to the lowest common denominator, nothing improves; when we keep our own standards, other projects rise to them. (Even if it takes time)


- Aaron J.


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On Oct. 12, 2012, 9:41 a.m., Jonathan Marten wrote:
> 
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> http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/106755/
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> 
> (Updated Oct. 12, 2012, 9:41 a.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for KDE Base Apps and Plasma.
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> If a removable device is mounted using the Plasma device notifier, there is no indication of what the Unix name of the device is or where it is mounted.  This information may be useful to the user for (a) accessing the mounted device from non-KDE applications, or (b) troubleshooting mounting or unmounting problems.
> 
> The attached patch shows this information when the device is hovered over, just above the "N actions for this device" text.  Depending on whether or not the device is mounted, there are three possibilities that can be shown here:
> 
>   /dev/XXX                           when not mounted
>   /dev/XXX mounted on /media/YYYY    when mounted
>   /dev/XXX mounted                   if mounted but the mount point is not available
> 
> Please be gentle, this is my first QML patch :-)
> 
> 
> This addresses bug 196939.
>     http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196939
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   plasma/generic/applets/devicenotifier/package/contents/ui/DeviceItem.qml 2a9b3f7 
> 
> Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/106755/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Built kde-workspace with this change, observed operation and display of device notifier with a selection of removable devices.
> 
> 
> Screenshots
> -----------
> 
> Device notifier with mounted device
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/106755/s/756/
> Tooltip with mounted device
>   http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/106755/s/769/
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jonathan Marten
> 
>

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