Dolphin file manager usability

[ereslibre at ereslibre.es]

> Hello Luca!

Hi !!,

>> 2) Can we open and close the group by clicking on a + sign next to it ?
>
> Maybe Rafael, who implemented the grouping mechanism, can give some input
> here from a technical point of view.
>
> From the Dolphin perspective introducing such a mechanism would add
> additional
> complexity and raises some questions:
> - Should the collapsing state for each group remembered for each
> directory?
> - When selecting all items: should collapsed groups be selected too?
> - It introduces a logical one-level treeview within a directory and the
> collapsing state must toggle when performing drag & drop.
>
> The grouping mechanism is implemented inside KCategoryView, which might
> get
> moved from Dolphin into kdelibs for KDE 4.1. Maybe it might make sense for
> other applications having collapsable groups (Amarok?), but from the
> Dolphin
> point of view I fear that adding this feature raises more problems than it
> solves. But I'm open for other opinions, maybe I'm missing a point here...

In the case this is implemented it will be done on KCategorizedView. I
don't think it is needed to save the previous state of the category
(extended or collapsed). From my point of view this could be implemented
on KCategorizedView on the future and Dolphin could benefit from it.

Well, I am right now on the Interrail and when I have time is on August.
Please let me go back and take a look at this idea, since KCategorizedView
is right now very very baby. If you manage to do it, please send me a
patch, but till August I won't be able to take a look at it.

>> 3) If the group is closed a click can select all the contained items
>
> All items can already be selected by clicking on the group header. Do you
> mean
> that when the group is closed that still all items should be selected
> then?
>
>> 4) can we open and close all the groups  with a single key?
>
> Usually a key is bound to an action which should be visible in the menu ->
> yet
> another menu item... For sure it would be possible assigning a key without
> an
> action, but then this feature is not discoverable and might have side
> effects
> when changing the shortcuts for existing actions...
>
>> Other views
>>  1) Why not to have a grouping in the column view?
>>  2) Why not to have a grouping in the detail view?
>
> This is more a technical problem than a design decision. I'm also not sure
> how
> a grouping inside a column view and details view should look like. Do you
> also expect having headers between each group? Or just any other kind of
> visual separation between the groups?

I am looking forward to implement this on the list view with columns, not
only on the icon view. That would be great, and I think is not as hard as
on Icons, so we just need to write "trivial" code. No idea right now,
haven't seen the code.

>> In some configuration windows like 'Configuring shortcuts' there are
>> treeviews that doesn't open to show entirely the labels. The labels must
>> be shown by enlarging the window if it is necessary. This is a small
>> note
>> but it makes a big usability improvement.
>
> The shortcuts dialog is not Dolphin specific, but I'm sure it will be
> improved
> for KDE 4.0.

Yeah, it is on kdelibs and from maelcum, if you want you can contact him
on IRC.

> Best regards,
> Peter

Bye,
Rafael Fernández López.