Review Request 120046: Dolphin: Additional "viewer" panel for file content preview via Okular::Part

Fabian Stanke me at fmos.at
Thu Sep 4 12:41:29 BST 2014 


> On Sept. 4, 2014, 10:09 vorm., Emmanuel Pescosta wrote:
> > Thanks for sharing your patch with us! :)
> > 
> > I like the idea of instant previewing of files, but IMHO a dock widget isn't well-suited for this purpose. 
> > Also having two preview panels (the information panel for music/videos/images and your panel for pdfs) is bad from a usability point of view.
> > 
> > I think we should implement this into an external previewer, like e.g. KLook (http://www.koryavov.net/2012/03/klook-new-utility-for-kde-and-rosa.html) and Apple's Quick Look.
> > We should first talk to other devs (e.g. KRunner, ...) if they also plan to write a small previewer application for KDE.
> > 
> > What do you think?
> 
> Fabian Stanke wrote:
>     I agree that having two preview panels is bad from a usability point of view.
>     However please consider that the two panels are serving orthogonal use cases, i.e. it seems unlikely that one would need content preview of text/images (both are supported by Okular) and videos/music at the same time. Moreover, the information panel is not (only) a preview panel, since it can be configured to not include a preview. Therefore it might well be used to display file properties and meta data along with the viewer panel (although I personally prefer to have file-based information in the main panel with detailed browsing).
>     
>     Regarding your point of a separate previewer, unfortunately I did not have the chance to work with either KLook nor Quick Look.
>     From the screenshots I found online it seems like those tools would significantly fall behind the file browsing capabilties of Dolphin (to little surprise of course). Also I have the impression that they are/will be optimized for collections of graphical content (images and videos), which can be "scanned" more easily than text.
>     Large collections of text-based content (not necessarily plain text, where we would enter the field of KDevelop and the likes) IMHO need a different balance of file-based and content-based browsing. In my particular use case (unfortunately I can not give you screenshots of actual data/files for confidentiality reasons) the possibility to quickly browse multiple directories at the same time, with a tabular view of the complete file information and with immediately accessible file-based filters (in brief, the power of Dolphin) are very useful.
>     
>     Of course, the above is just the expression of my personal views. I do not and can not put them in context of a larger feature-wise strategy of Dolphin (much less, the KDE ecosystem as a whole). My main motivation to share this patch was the philosophy expressed here https://dolphin.kde.org/philosophy.html and my assumption that the popularity of my use case might be comparable to those of the terminal panel, with which the viewer panel shares the identical level on non-intrusiveness.
> 
> Emmanuel Pescosta wrote:
>     > I did not have the chance to work with either KLook
>     
>     See this short demo video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iADISfFTyjY (but ignore the limited file browser capabilities, IMHO the file browser and overview capabilities should be removed)
>     When you want to have a quick look into your pdf, video or music file, you just press space and this previewer will be opened and when you press cancel it will be closed again.
>     
>     I think such an external previewer is much better fitted for such than an integrated panel.
>     
>     > the power of Dolphin
>     
>     You can still use all the power of Dolphin, only the pdf (picture, video and more) previews are opened in a new dialog/window instead of your preview panel. 
>     The previewer shouldn't contain any file manager/overview related things. 
>     
>     > popularity of my use case
>     
>     I think that many people want fast previews of their files, but I think this should be implemented in as small external previewer instead of a new panel.

> you just press space and this previewer will be opened and when you press cancel it will be closed again.

Sorry, I did not realize that you were saying to use KLook along with Dolphin. In that case I do not see the difference (in terms of UX) to just using Dolphin plus Okular as stand-alone app. When I have one file open, it takes three keystrokes to view the next file (Esc, Arrow down, Space) and then the window probably covers the information about the file I'm currently viewing and of all the other files that might be referred to by the current one etc..

> I think that many people want fast previews of their files

One keystroke (Arrow down; to select next file) is faster than three ;)

> I think this should be implemented in as small external previewer instead of a new panel.

If the preview refreshes when the file selection changes and if the previewer automagically gets out of the way of the file browser, I will happily agree. :)


- Fabian


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On Sept. 4, 2014, 9:48 vorm., Fabian Stanke wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/120046/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated Sept. 4, 2014, 9:48 vorm.)
> 
> 
> Review request for Dolphin.
> 
> 
> Repository: kde-baseapps
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> I'm using this patch at work, where I deal with hundreds of PDF and ODT documents every day. Using a file/directory based content management (via NFS), I needed a way for fast content preview. The thumbnails displayed by the information panel are too small to be readable (text with point size 10).
> 
> I'm posting this for review to let you decide whether this seems useful/desirable to have upstream.
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   dolphin/src/CMakeLists.txt 6f256a2 
>   dolphin/src/dolphinmainwindow.cpp 95b08af 
>   dolphin/src/panels/viewer/viewerpanel.h PRE-CREATION 
>   dolphin/src/panels/viewer/viewerpanel.cpp PRE-CREATION 
> 
> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/120046/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Using this locally for two days now.
> 
> 
> File Attachments
> ----------------
> 
> screenshot
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2014/09/04/0dfe45aa-9643-4c80-8ef6-46b7bb0e5bd9__screenshot.png
> openSUSE rpm
>   https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/media/uploaded/files/2014/09/04/4d973e3e-6fd6-4480-b59b-b429f7e7ee35__dolphin-4.11.5-474.8_FS.1.x86_64.rpm
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Fabian Stanke
> 
>

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