Hi folks, as discussed back in February (Subject "Split/dual pane view again (but this time with code)" [1]), I've been working on a split view branch for Nautilus. Since then, I've been cleaning up the patchset, and modified it according to the discussion that was taking place in linked thread.
The code is on git://github.com/hb/nautilus.git in the "split-view" branch. I've been using the code for months now, without problems. I also got some feedback from testers, thanks to an Ubuntu PPA and Arch Linux packages, which were very positive. Not being aware of serious remaining issues, I thought it's time to actually request a review. This is my first request-for-review with non-trivial patches to a GNOME project, so please let me know if I am missing something or should be more elaborate on a specific topic. Reasoning ========= There's been much discussion going on on how split view filebrowsing is useful, so I'll make this short. File operations like "copy" or "move" have a source and a target location, which can be represented by file managers as two adjacent panes. The main difference to just having two windows side-by-side is the introduction of a "default target" for those operations, which makes (especially keyboard-) navigation much faster and easier. Personally, I find this especially true when dealing with remote locations via GVFS. It's also useful for enabling the user to create Nautilus scripts that work on two locations, such as a file- or directory diff. User-visible changes ==================== Spatial mode: ------------- None intended Navigation mode: ---------------- New menu items: View -> Extra Pane Edit -> Copy to -> Copy to other pane Edit -> Move to -> Move to other pane Go -> Switch to other pane Go -> Go to same location as other pane Environment variables for Nautilus scripts: NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_SELECTED_URIS NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_CURRENT_URI (which do the same as their equivalents without NEXT_PANE, but for the inactive pane) Architectural changes: ====================== In the current state of git master, every window can hold one or multiple slots, and one of these slots is "active" at a given time. The branch introduces the concept of a "pane" as a new layer between slots and windows. Every window can hold one or multiple panes, and one of these panes is active at a given time. Every pane, on the other hand, contains one or multiple slots, of which a single slot is active for each pane at a given time. Consequently, in order to access the currently active slot in a window, a programmer would now access window->details->active_pane->active_slot instead of window->details->active_slot. The pane implementation resides in the pane classes NautilusWindowPane and the derived NautilusNavigationWindowPane. Much logic that used to be specific for a window (e.g. the location and other bars) is now specific to a pane. The first commits in the split-view branch (roughly until 4ca8c17639af22f5cf40821c1a6504377e560ac0) reflect this re-factoring, and don't introduce new functionality. Relying on this foundation, the remaining parts are rather straight forward. Bugs / Limitations / Annoyances =============================== I am currently only aware of a single small annoyance: When in split view mode, and a pane opens an additional tab, the pane gets resized to be larger than before. Obviously, there's something fishy going on during size allocation negotionations between the GtkPaned and GtkNotebook. I have not yet been able to track that down yet. It would be great if one of the core devs could have a look and comment. Holger [1] http://markmail.org/thread/qqpzgzanx6ffihrq -- nautilus-list mailing list nautilus-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list
