Dolphin left panel improvements request

[Mark Gaiser]

On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Mathias Dufresne <mathias.dufresne at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Until few months I was Konqueror with its "filemanagement" profile to deal
> with my files and folders using my mouse. Since Konqueror is not able to do
> that as it is concentrating itself on Web content which seems logical.
>
> I first sent a mail to David Faure as the patch which seemed to me
> (according to description, not the code which I don't understand,
> unfortunately) responsible to the removal of these features and after a
> small but quite interesting discussion I'm here to discuss about the
> features I'd like to see added to Dolphin and why I think they are
> interesting.
>
> Before starting I must say I'm not very good in languages and can sound a
> bit rough when speaking English. My point is not shout ;)
>
> First which panel am I speaking about ?
> The one showing only directories, accessible with F7 (thank's again David
> for the tip ;)
>

Thank you both, i didn't know that either :)

>
> What I was in love with into Konqueror and I'd like to see added into
> Dolphin's directories only left panel:
> - into Konqueror folders were not movable in left panel. David said it was
> a bug and even if complained alone when faced to that first I finally
> became very found of it.
> Why? The left panel is not where we work, we work mainly with files and
> files are into right panel. The left panel is then used only to select
> where we want to work. It's preparation of work, more work but still not
> the real work. This preparation can be performed with not much attention.
>
> A real world example of that is flat painting: you can be really careful
> applying paint on walls but you can hate to prepare the flat (some sheet on
> the floor, adhesive band around the surface to paint...) to avoid paint to
> be splattered everywhere. Some won't prepare the flat nor clean it after it
> ruined. The walls will be very well painted but the floor will be also :)
>

So you basically want to have the panel in a "read only" mode. No changes
can be made via the panel, only via the actual views.
That sounds logical, but i think there are also use cases for having some
interaction within the panel, just for ease of use sake.


>
> - add in left panel context menu (when right clicking on some folder) same
> "open with" menu which is available in right panel.
> This seems to be an easy task but, again, I have no idea of the complexity
> of it, I don't "code".
>

I'm not quite sure if i follow you here.
Do you perhaps mean that right clicking on a folder in the right panel
should look the same on the left?


> - the possibility to display only the folders into user home directory
> rather than necessarily display the whole system tree.
> My dear mother which is now 68 is a Linux user for years but she's not a
> system admin (I can assure you that ;) and files and folders management is
> still a real pain to her. And unfortunately I don't expect things will be
> better in the future...
> For her seeing the whole system tree will be something which will afraid
> her a lot. For me it is just a pain to find my home folder in the whole but
> I know it's there and I know where. She's always afraid of computers, she's
> never sure things are there nor where they are...
>

Time to learn another shortcut: ALT+Home :) It jumps you back to the home
folder.
Also, if you have the places panel (F9) it also has a "Home" place.
Furthermore, the toolbar (with back, forward, etc...) can be adjusted
(right click on it: "Configure toolbars..." and there you see a "Home"
somewhere. The button is there, but not visible by default. Just add it to
the visible buttons and you have another way to jump to the home folder. Do
you want more ways? I know one more, but that's not user friendly. Open the
console within dolphin (F4) and type "cd ~".


> - in konqueror there were some small buttons to choose which left panel we
> want to use (full system tree, home folder only tree...) and they were a
> nice and quick way to switch among the views.
> Perhaps an option to show these buttons or not would be nice. They were
> nice shortcut for user knowing what they do but I remind my mother calling
> one evening because she clicked on one of those without noticing or at
> least not understanding what just happened... she lost the view, the only
> one she was used to enough to deal with and had now idea why it changed nor
> how to revert that change.
>

I would like to have that feature as well! So to "chroot" the folders view
or to not chroot. But i'm not quite sure if adding buttons within a panel
would be pretty.. Perhaps the dolphin settings dialog should get a new tab
for "Panel settings" where we could drop settings for those panels.

>
> - a last thing which is not about the folders panel but the "places" panel:
> That's a panel I don't use but after discussing with David I finally
> understood its purpose: an easy access to (at least) USB pens.
> My Mom does not mount anything at all, I do (using xterm, thanks to
> OpenVPN :) which is not the most efficient way. Here the "places" panel
> would be great to help here but once again, it is to complex for I ask her
> to learn it: at least this panel should have an option to not show mounted
> devices.
> I ask for an option here because I'm very sure Dolphin have already a lot
> of users used to see mounted devices, users which most certainly use this
> buttons as shortcut to access devices rather searching into the tree.
>
> I think this is just a matter of getting used to it.
What you want sounds like a feature that could be useful in office
environments as well. Where you don't want the employee to stick it's nose
in drives that might be there, but should not be accessed... Something like
that.
If we can get a settings tab for panels then adding this one in should be
simple, but by default i would like to show these kind of things.


> I'll try to follow that but summer's here for all of us. So I will wish
> you all a great time during that summer, sunny time or fresh time, or both,
> as you like :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> mathias
>
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