Konqueror 4

[Kevin Ottens]

Le samedi 28 octobre 2006 01:20, Aaron J. Seigo a écrit :
> interesting. ettrich, dfaure, ben meyer and myself met briefly on irc the
> other day to discuss the file manager in kde4.

Yup, I also remember discussing with ben meyer about this during aKademy, and 
recently with dfaure on IRC.

Nice to see so much interest in improving file management in kde4.

> the more i look at konqueror the more i wonder if we'll be able to truly
> pull off a "browser and a manager" application. the paradigms are so
> fundamentally different .......

I admit I'm still pondering about the right approach regarding this. There's 
pros and cons in both.

That said, I'm convinced that even if we go with two separate applications 
libkonq has probably to be shared between them.

> one example is the location bar. it makes all the sense in the world to
> have a fully editable url bar as we do now for a browser (e.g. a web
> browser). but is it the most ergonomic thing in a file manager? hm.

Well, you probably have to keep it at least for file management on network 
shares.

> [...]
> the negatives of working with dolphin include:
>
> - it's kde3; peter's expressed desire to port to kde4 sooner than later
> and it shouldn't be -too- hard. the interview stuff is probably the biggest
> bit.

Well, we already have some candidates for this floating around. Ben Meyer's 
view and recent efforts on KDirModel coming to my mind. That's not exactly as 
if we're starting from scratch.

> - there's a certain amount of features and polish missing that can be 
> seen in konqueror. this is to be expected given the time put into konqi

And that's the biggest problem with starting a separate application, that said 
it can be easier by using libkonq which has already quite some interesting 
logic IMHO. In return it would probably improve libkonq.

> the benefits include:
>  - we have to ask ourselves about each inclusion
>  - we don't have to be tempted with reworking rather than ripping out cruft
> like the sidebars as they don't exist in dolphin ;)

Well, that assumes the sidebars has to be removed. :-)

>  - it's a much nimbler code base at this point
>
> so the big question is: one browser+manager or one browser and one manager?
> if the latter it may make sense to adopt dolphin at least as a test bed if
> not as an outright candidate for the role as manager.

Dolphin is definitely a good test bed. But IMO it's still no an outright 
candidate as default file manager (might become the case though).

> this would free us to 
> work konqi into the best -browser- possible. (this is more about usage
> paradigms than what sort of content is viewed/managed; e.g. this isn't
> about turning konqi into web browser only or recreating the entire
> "embedded viewer" managerie as seen in konqi today in a separate
> application we call a "file manager")
>
> for me, the biggest improvement targets for file management in kde4
> include:
>
>  - feedback (metadata, previews)

Hmm, which kind of improvement are you looking for? I consider ourselves quite 
strong in this department.

>  - navigation (breadcrumbing, drop zones, integrated search)

Note that we probably want more information about breadcrumbing to be sure 
it's a real improvement or if we should find something else. It looks 
tempting to me but replacing the URL bar is IMO one of the critical parts we 
want to get right. Of course I'm biased regarding the criticality of this 
thing, and it comes from the fact that I'm not that happy with system:/ 
current behavior. I think the problem system:/ and friends tried to solve 
should be solved there instead (hopefully with no side-effect this time).

>  - covering fundamental use cases (near?) perfectly (d'n'd in konqi is
> quite poor righ tnow; this past week i painfully watched people try and
> deal with it. renaming needs to be dealt with smarter. etc...)

Hmmm, could you elaborate a bit regarding d'n'd problems in konqi?

Regards.
-- 
Kévin 'ervin' Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net
"Ni le maître sans disciple, Ni le disciple sans maître,
Ne font reculer l'ignorance."
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