Spatial mapping of icons in konqueror -- looking to make a contribution toward its addition

[Matt Sandler]

hello!

(relatively) new user to KDE - last few months, and love it!

However, I do miss a key feature that it is in gnome, windoze, and apple:
the ability to spatially organize icons - and have that information
retained.  (I sometimes open a folder of stuff with nautilus to get this
ability.)

I'm pretty clear on how the feature can be added to konqueror, but I don't
quite have the Qt/C++ programming skills to do it, so would like to 'sponsor
it' with perhaps a contribution of, say $100 to the KDE foundation and $100
to the developer who might be interested to add the feature. 

thanks very much!

Matt Sandler

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In brief: 
----------------
> it would be a 'view' much like 'multi-column view' or 'detailed list view'
  (optimally? it would just be added to the existing 'icon view' mode)
> when in that view mode: 
  - when any of:   konqueror is closed;   a folder a user looking is left
for another folder; 
    the view changed to another view mode
  - to the ".directory" file that is deposited in that folder, is added the
name of 
    each file in that folder, and the file's (x, y) coordinates
> when that view mode is selected, the ".directory" file is queried, and
spatial position 
  of the icons restored

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Example result? 
- you can organize your icons, then go to a list view of some sort, but,
then when 
  going back to 'icon view' your icon position is just reloaded from the
".directory"
  file 


==================
Some details: 
- the crux of putting the meta data into the ".directory" file is that it
makes the spatial 
  information invariant to changes in the path to a folder  (be it a name
change, etc); this 
  is in contrast to putting that information into some registry somewhere,
linked back with a 
  path
- someone who knows this stuff well, would probably make the info on (x, y)
position tied to the 
  inode (sic?) of each file in the folder, instead of the listed name, to
make it invariant to 
  trivial changes in the name of files in the folder when viewing the folder
in some other 
  view mode
- there are some further nifty extensions ideas,  but I don't want to get
overly ambitious