Proposal: Enhanced file system navigation for KDE application under Windows

[Romain Pokrzywka]

On Thursday 26 May 2011 14:12:38 Fabian Aichele wrote:
> Hello!
>
>  
>
> I've experimented with a very basic implementation of an alternate Qt file
> system engine under Windows that uses the file system access routines of
> the Windows Shell instead of the "ordinary" file system manipulation
> routines that are tailored to deal with "classic" files and folders
> residing on physical media on the local machine.
>
> Essentially, this would enable applications using Qt to navigate the
> complete content of the Explorer namespace, including "virtual folders"
> like the system control panel, but also remote network shares, or basically
> anything that uses ITEMIDLIST data structures to interact with Windows
> Explorer.
>
> As of now, I've mastered the most basic task of actually navigating a
> folder/container hierarchy starting from a given point within the Explorer
> namespace, so I've verified combining Qt's file engine interface and the
> Explorer namespace is possible.
>
>  
>
> I'd like to ask for some feedback if this is a priority at all for KDE on
> Windows (personally I definitely think it is, and should be), and if
> there's interest in such a piece of software: How closely should I stick to
> the layout that Windows Explorer itself imposes on the file system
> hierarchy? Should I simply replicate it, or has anyone suggestions that I
> haven't come up with yet?
>
>  
>
> With best regards,
>
> Fabian Aichele

Hi Fabian,

This can indeed be a nice feature to improve KDE support on windows, good work !

I'm not really familiar about 'Explorer style navigation', but I assumed that this basically what you see when you open 
a file explorer.
My main question is: what type of limitations are you talking about when you write "How closely should I stick to the 
layout that Windows Explorer itself imposes on the file system hierarchy? ". Is it really different from the "C:
\foo\bar" hierarchy we normally use ?

Also, does that mean you can get access to things like Libraries on Windows Vista/7 ? That would indeed be a cool thing 
to have.

Now regarding your implementation and where things should go, I'm a bit undecided. On one hand, since this seems to be 
an internal modification of Qt (ie. QFileEngine), I could see it being merged upstream into Qt directly, as it is not 
really related to KDE in particular. I'm not sure either if it's even possible to have it outside the Qt code (unless 
QFileEngine supports plugins, but it doesn't afaik). However I might just have misunderstood the implementation details, 
so don't hesitate to tell me if this isn't correct.

Then, as far as the browsing is concerned, QDesktopServices has the storageLocation() method which maps well known 
places to paths. I haven't given it much thoughts yet, but maybe there's something do be done there too, for example 
adding new standard places. However if those can't be mapped to a real path on disk (like libraries), then this wouldn't 
be very helpful.

All in all, I like the idea, I'm just not sure of how it is implemented and thus what can be done with it. Maybe you 
could show us an example ?

Cheers
Romain






-- 
Romain Pokrzywka | romain.pokrzywka at kdab.com | Senior Qt Software Engineer & Trainer
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