Dolphin left panel improvements request

[Mark Gaiser]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2017 at 10:50 PM, Mark Gaiser <markg85 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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.
>

Just a little note.
This is apparently being implemented as we speak:
https://phabricator.kde.org/D7477
(in the settings, but not in it's own tab though)

>
>> - 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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