Tools menu items (was: Removing Dolphin's tool menu)

[Frank Reininghaus]

Hi,

2012/9/3 Todd:
> On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Frank Reininghaus <frank78ac at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> thanks for your message!
>>
>> > What does everyone feel think about this proposal?  Of course there may
>> > be
>> > very good reasons for keeping things the way they are, and if not these
>> > may
>> > not be the optimal approaches.
>>
>> I agree that the "Show Filterbar" option would also fit in the 'view'
>> menu, but I don't really see a compelling reason for removing the
>> "Tools" menu at the moment. At least the "Compare" action looks like
>> it could maybe not be implemented easily in another way, and I know
>> that people use it (even I use it sometimes).
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Frank
>
>
> Alright, forget for the time being about removing the menu, lets look at the
> items in the menu individually and figure out what to do with them on a
> case-by-case basis:
>
> show terminal: is there any reason this is needed?  There is already a
> service menu, a panel, and it is easy enough to launch a terminal from
> krunner or the application launcher.  What is the use-case for this that
> cannot be satisfied by other methods, especially since by default it is in a
> sub-menu?

1. The service menu doesn't come with a shortcut. Shift+F4 is my
preferred way to open a Terminal. Moreover, the action from the menu
opens the Terminal in the directory which is shown in the view. The
service menu only does this if no items are selected.

2. The panel always follows the current directory, which is sometimes,
but not always, what I want.

3. KRunner+application launcher don't open the Terminal in the current
directory.

> Show Filterbar in the combined menu: this seems to be a pretty common and
> generally useful, so might it be better to have this in the top level of the
> menu and not a sub-menu?
>
> Show Filterbar in the traditional menu: pretty much everything related to
> showing or hiding things in the interface, configurating the address bar,
> showing and hiding panels, and controlling split views are all in the view
> menu.  So for consistency the view menu seems to me to be the proper place
> for it.
>
> Remote charset: same as above, it controls how the files are viewed, so for
> consistency I think it should go in the view menu.
>
> Compare files: is there a reason this can't go in the right-click menu, if
> not as a service menu then as a hard-coded part of the menu?  All other file
> operations go in the right-click menu, so for consistency this would seem to
> me to be the best place for it.  Personally I always look for it in the
> right-click menu, I have to constantly remind myself it is in the tools
> menu.

Past experience shows that any behaviour change, no matter how small
it may seem, is considered as a bug by some users. Therefore, I prefer
to be quite conservative when it comes to changes like this. Let's
wait for feedback from other people and see if there is a big enough
demand for changes in the 'Tools' menu.

Best regards,
Frank