Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
Allan Day wrote on 02/07/12 09:38: ... Jon has been doing some fantastic work on Nautilus recently. It was getting very little - if any - developer attention and he has stepped up to make dramatic improvements, including addressing long-standing complaints. I'm really excited about the next release of Nautilus thanks to his work; instead of having no movement whatsoever, we are going to have lots of great improvements to talk about. ... You are confusing movement with improvements. -- mpt ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
Adam Dingle a...@yorba.org wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: Adam, if you wanted to discuss this change, you could have done so on the bug or on the Nautilus mailing list, or by asking on #gnome-design. I would have been happy to have given you some background on why the decision was made. Jon has been doing some fantastic work on Nautilus recently. It was getting very little - if any - developer attention and he has stepped up to make dramatic improvements, including addressing long-standing complaints. I'm really excited about the next release of Nautilus thanks to his work; instead of having no movement whatsoever, we are going to have lots of great improvements to talk about. There has been a bunch of discussion around these changes. Not the mailing list approach that you seem to want, but the existing Nautilus maintainers have been involved and a range of design people have been consulted. I personally agreed with removing compact view - I think it's a good change. ... I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured . I strongly disagree with that suggestion. I don't think it would be workable, and I don't think it would make GNOME a better place to work. There is still time to discuss changes that have been made; we don't need to wrap ourselves up in policies. The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. ... There is no consensus. There are features that some people have gotten used to, and there has been a long period of adding features without considering how they fit into the whole. No one objects when you add a feature, yet features can ruin a design if you keep adding them. Nautilus has been at saturation point for a while; it's at the stage where it's actually very difficult to improve it without taking something away. Allan -- IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
Le lundi 02 juillet 2012 à 09:38 +0100, Allan Day a écrit : Adam Dingle a...@yorba.org wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: Adam, if you wanted to discuss this change, you could have done so on the bug or on the Nautilus mailing list, or by asking on #gnome-design. I would have been happy to have given you some background on why the decision was made. Adam already answered to this point: I'm well aware of nautilus-list, but chose to post here because I think there's a problem here beyond just Nautilus. In my opinion, useful features are vanishing from core GNOME apps without adequate notice to the community and opportunity for discussion by people who use those features regularly. No one objects when you add a feature, yet features can ruin a design if you keep adding them. Nautilus has been at saturation point for a while; it's at the stage where it's actually very difficult to improve it without taking something away. I don't use the compact view, but what worries me is, after several messages on this list, there is still no justification for this removal, except the one in the bug report: There is really little difference between compact mode and icon mode with labels on the side. Well, except for that that horrible horizontal scrolling. That's a bit too short for an explanation (with the fact that the icon mode with labels on the side is also removed). While I agree removal are sometimes necessary, there is a good chance it will be seen as a regression by some users, which should be well explained. Emmanuel. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 1:38 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: Adam Dingle a...@yorba.org wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: Adam, if you wanted to discuss this change, you could have done so on the bug or on the Nautilus mailing list, or by asking on #gnome-design. I would have been happy to have given you some background on why the decision was made. Jon has been doing some fantastic work on Nautilus recently. It was getting very little - if any - developer attention and he has stepped up to make dramatic improvements, including addressing long-standing complaints. I'm really excited about the next release of Nautilus thanks to his work; instead of having no movement whatsoever, we are going to have lots of great improvements to talk about. There has been a bunch of discussion around these changes. Not the mailing list approach that you seem to want, but the existing Nautilus maintainers have been involved and a range of design people have been consulted. I personally agreed with removing compact view - I think it's a good change. ... I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured . I strongly disagree with that suggestion. I don't think it would be workable, and I don't think it would make GNOME a better place to work. There is still time to discuss changes that have been made; we don't need to wrap ourselves up in policies. Allan, thanks for your level-headed response. In retrospect, I think the tone of my original post was too dramatic. I got upset when I saw a longstanding favorite feature disappear and I made some sweeping suggestions that may have gone too far. I apologize for the dramatic tone and will avoid it in the future. I remain seriously concerned that removing Nautilus's compact view was a mistake, but as you have and others have pointed out this is not really the right place to discuss that. I'll begin a discussion on the Nautilus mailing list and will look forward to discussing this more there. More broadly, I also remain concerned that large changes are being made to core GNOME apps by a small set of people (basically the design team plus the maintainers of those apps) without enough input or feedback from users of those apps. You're probably right that a sweeping policy change is not the way to address this. But I do think it's a problem that needs to be addressed. adam ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 4:38 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: Adam Dingle a...@yorba.org wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: Adam, if you wanted to discuss this change, you could have done so on the bug or on the Nautilus mailing list, or by asking on #gnome-design. I would have been happy to have given you some background on why the decision was made. Jon has been doing some fantastic work on Nautilus recently. It was getting very little - if any - developer attention and he has stepped up to make dramatic improvements, including addressing long-standing complaints. I'm really excited about the next release of Nautilus thanks to his work; instead of having no movement whatsoever, we are going to have lots of great improvements to talk about. There has been a bunch of discussion around these changes. Not the mailing list approach that you seem to want, but the existing Nautilus maintainers have been involved and a range of design people have been consulted. I personally agreed with removing compact view - I think it's a good change. ... I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured . I strongly disagree with that suggestion. I don't think it would be workable, and I don't think it would make GNOME a better place to work. There is still time to discuss changes that have been made; we don't need to wrap ourselves up in policies. The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. ... There is no consensus. There are features that some people have gotten used to, and there has been a long period of adding features without considering how they fit into the whole. No one objects when you add a feature, yet features can ruin a design if you keep adding them. Nautilus has been at saturation point for a while; it's at the stage where it's actually very difficult to improve it without taking something away. Allan -- IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list Then I guess the question becomes how we can involve the greater GNOME community in these sorts of decisions. Existing designers and developers may have been consulted, but they are not the only ones affected. The choices that a handful of people are making affect everyone who uses GNOME, though the community is rarely consulted or even notified until the change has been made and all but finalized. I suspect that I am not the only one disturbed and disappointed by what seem like rapid changes to existing projects without public discussion. If there was discussion regarding the removal of compact view and later icon mode with text, I'd like to know when and where it occurred as well as when and where I should keep an eye out for future changes and removals. As I understand it (and I'm rather new to the development community, so I may be wrong), adding features, new modules, etc to GNOME is an often lengthy (and perhaps more importantly, transparent) process of proposal, review, design and re-design, which seems proper. It serves to keep GNOME running smoothly and the community at large involved in development. Unfortunately though, the process for removing features doesn't appear to be nearly as robust and/or transparent. A handful of developers and/or designers talk amongst themselves and decide to remove features without consulting the community at large. As a result changes like the ones above occur rapidly over an hour or perhaps a day, without any sort of public discussion or even notification (aside from postings on bugzilla and git, which apparently occur after discussion). And then on release day we are surprised that feature XYZ has been removed. Since the removal occurred a month or more back, we are told that we had ample time to disagree and since we failed to do so, tough luck. However, since the removals are done quietly without so much as a blog posting this seems disingenuous at best - even when posters replied within a few hours [1] to the change on bugzilla, they were all but ignored (at least publicly) by those affecting the change. I have long been under the impression that since GNOME is a free software project, development is (or at least should be) done in a public, transparently and with inclusion as a
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Sat, 2012-06-30 at 16:20 -0007, Adam Dingle wrote: The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. All I ask is to be informed before these features vanish and to be given the chance to say why I like them so much. The directory tree sidebar was removed recently as well: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676897 Again, no real explanation was given as to why it was removed. It may not be the most commonly used feature, but it allows Nautilus to work like Windows Explorer (a plus for many people, I'm sure), and it is one of the best ways to organize a bunch of files - drag them to various places in the tree, without opening tons of tabs and windows. The anti-pattern for both removals is like, there's some peeling paint in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood. I wholly agree with you that these big removals need to be discussed. It could have gone like, I don't like horizontal scrolling in the compact view. It's like icon view with labels on the side, anyway. No, not really - in icon view the labels wrap and columns are all the same size, which make the list hard to read. Oh, you are right. Here's the short patch to fix that. And what was the problem with horizontal scrolling, anyway? ... Federico ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 09:38:36AM +0100, Allan Day wrote: Adam, if you wanted to discuss this change, you could have done so on the bug or on the Nautilus mailing list, or by asking on #gnome-design. I would have been happy to have given you some background on why the decision was made. FWIW, I see nothing wrong with using desktop-devel-list. Bugzilla is not meant for general discussions. For discussing technicalities, cool, but detailed discussion should be held elsewhere. A quick why was this done is more or less the limit of Bugzilla. Believe nobody does any harm on purpose, but seems people quickly notice changes. Way quicker than that they're explained. I'd just like my rubber band selection to work :P -- Regards, Olav ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
Federico Mena Quintero feder...@gnome.org wrote: ... The anti-pattern for both removals is like, there's some peeling paint in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood. ... How do you know that was the reason for the decision, if the background hasn't been explained? The anti-pattern for that statement is like, assuming motivations out of ignorance. I'll let Jon speak for himself. However, I can at least give you my personal design opinion on the issue. First of all, I do think that compact view is problematic, and I don't see any why we shouldn't remove UI if it isn't of sufficiently high quality. Some issues with compact view: * Horizontal scrolling is unergonomic with mouse and touchpad input * It is hard to scan multiple columns when they scroll, and it is difficult to find a particular item in an alphabetical list if it wraps over multiple columns * Filenames have a tendency to become truncated, and filenames also disappear off the side of the screen. The other reason why I think it is good to remove compact view is that it is inelegant as a solution to users' needs. List and icon view have clear roles and are easy to communicate to users. Grid view prioritises visual representation of files. List view focuses on finding my name. With these two options we offer a clear and straightforward choice. Compact view doesn't fit neatly into our existing functionality. It overlaps with the list view (since it focuses on finding by name), yet it misses some of its advantages (such as the ability to easily reorder the list). It also overlaps with zoom, which is the standard way to display more items at once. I'd much rather offer two, clearly differentiated views that work well, rather than have three poorly distinguished options, particularly when one of them has serious usability issues. Allan -- IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
2012/7/2 Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com Jon has been doing some fantastic work on Nautilus recently. It was getting very little - if any - developer attention and he has stepped up to make dramatic improvements, including addressing long-standing complaints. I'm really excited about the next release of Nautilus thanks to his work; instead of having no movement whatsoever, we are going to have lots of great improvements to talk about. Are you sure? Many basic and long standing nautilus features was removed in the last weeks. I wonder what people inside and outside GNOME will say when they will see, for example, those changes: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=ef467c8775392d0f0feb0e38f7a80f2d41719d84 http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=b8d5b4a7bcf47ed34a6343c95bcc3b079255c0a0 http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=331860440c50a979bcbeafa401d48490c758db5a IMHO cheering the new streamlined nautilus _after_ all unwanted feature will be removed is not a smart marketing strategy. I fear you can't simply say the new nautilus is great, our developers did a great works and hope nobody (community members, users, bloggers, journalists and so on) will complain. Moreover as a GNOME community member I would prefer to know the reasons of major changes happening in GNOME (I repeat, major: and if you sum up all small removal happened in nautilus you'll have a huge change between 3.4 and 3.6) for a simple and trivial reasons: when people know I'm a GNOME member, then ask me why GNOME did this? and that? why I can't do this anymore?. Simply replying by design is alienating to me :/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 8:03 AM, Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com wrote: Federico Mena Quintero wrote: .. The anti-pattern for both removals is like, there's some peeling paint in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood. .. How do you know that was the reason for the decision, if the background hasn't been explained? The anti-pattern for that statement is like, assuming motivations out of ignorance. I'll let Jon speak for himself. However, I can at least give you my personal design opinion on the issue. First of all, I do think that compact view is problematic, and I don't see any why we shouldn't remove UI if it isn't of sufficiently high quality. Some issues with compact view: * Horizontal scrolling is unergonomic with mouse and touchpad input * It is hard to scan multiple columns when they scroll, and it is difficult to find a particular item in an alphabetical list if it wraps over multiple columns * Filenames have a tendency to become truncated, and filenames also disappear off the side of the screen. The other reason why I think it is good to remove compact view is that it is inelegant as a solution to users' needs. List and icon view have clear roles and are easy to communicate to users. Grid view prioritises visual representation of files. List view focuses on finding my name. With these two options we offer a clear and straightforward choice. Compact view doesn't fit neatly into our existing functionality. It overlaps with the list view (since it focuses on finding by name), yet it misses some of its advantages (such as the ability to easily reorder the list). It also overlaps with zoom, which is the standard way to display more items at once. I'd much rather offer two, clearly differentiated views that work well, rather than have three poorly distinguished options, particularly when one of them has serious usability issues. Allan, thanks for your thoughts. I've responded on a new thread on nautilus-list, which seems like a good place to continue this discussion: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2012-July/msg5.html adam___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
- Mensaje original - De: Allan Day allanp...@gmail.com Para: Federico Mena Quintero feder...@gnome.org CC: desktop-devel-list@gnome.org Enviado: Lunes 2 de julio de 2012 17:03 Asunto: Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus) Federico Mena Quintero feder...@gnome.org wrote: ... The anti-pattern for both removals is like, there's some peeling paint in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood. ... How do you know that was the reason for the decision, if the background hasn't been explained? The anti-pattern for that statement is like, assuming motivations out of ignorance. That's the point of this thread, some decisions are taken and people make assumptions about the reasons behind based on the scarce info available. I think we must find a better way of communicating these changes. It is a difficult problem to address because designing GNOME by comittee doesn't work and we really need the leadership and expertise of the design team to reach a good user experience. But on the other hand, without properly communication, we lose the opportunity to develop a design pattern language in the GNOME community. I'm sorry for just point what I think that it is a problem without suggesting a defintive solution. I think Allan posts are very good explaining the design concepts and the new designs. Maybe this is the way to go. Cheers, -- Juanjo Marin ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 16:03 +0100, Allan Day wrote: Federico Mena Quintero feder...@gnome.org wrote: ... The anti-pattern for both removals is like, there's some peeling paint in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood. ... How do you know that was the reason for the decision, if the background hasn't been explained? The anti-pattern for that statement is like, assuming motivations out of ignorance. Okay, that was a bad *analogy*. I didn't assume motivation. But without an explanation of the motives, I can only infer - and this smells to me like I don't like how this feels; I have the power to convince someone to remove the code, so I'll do that. Maybe my supposition is wrong, but you are not giving me much to work from. I know Jon means well, but I'm inferring from the two cases I've seen (bgo#676842, bgo#676897), where the only thing Jon said on a bug was, in effect, this doesn't work to my liking, and then proceeded to remove a bunch of code for very concrete features. compact view is problematic, and I don't see any why we shouldn't remove UI if it isn't of sufficiently high quality. This is a very dangerous line to tread. A *LOT* of our interface is not as high-quality as someone with high standards would desire. But we can't remove big features just because they aren't up to someone's standards. We should improve them instead until they are palatable, or we should make them superfluous when there is a better way of doing what they do and with a good transition path. Adam's concrete requirements are something like: 1. Need to browse lots of files. 2. Care more about the names than the icons. 3. Don't care about file metadata very much (superfluous detail). And in the thread he started in nautilus-list, he provided *evidence* that the other remaining views don't meet those requirements and thus are harder for him to use. At least he provided a thorough explanation. I'm all for code cleanups, UI cleanups, and anything that can improve our state of affairs. Forgive me for using a strong word, but destroying working functionality without explaining exactly what made it bad, and without trying to fix it first, is just vandalism. Federico ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 3:44 PM, John Stowers john.stowers.li...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Jasper St. Pierre jstpie...@mecheye.net wrote: It seems like the broken labels beside icons behavior should be treated as a bug in GtkIconView that should just be fixed. Don't worry about it, the text beside icons bug was fixed by removing the offending feature too. http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=6aac88928b1935c8e4f5c54a61935f05c57d740e Did we remove it because it was hard to make it work or did app developers signal that this was an unused feature? I must admit I don't know of many prorgrams that have this feature...? ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On 06/30/2012 06:27 PM, Adam Dingle wrote: I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one You probably want nautilus-list for nautilus specific discussions. https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list - Andreas ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On So, 01.07.2012 16:11, Andreas Nilsson wrote: I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one You probably want nautilus-list for nautilus specific discussions. https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list His proposal was a desktop-wide policy on feature removals, taking a recent change in Nautilus as an example. As such, it's not Nautilus-specific. I've also been unpleasantly surprised by this and other removals. I liked Colin's mail about regressions due to systemd/gnome-settings-daemon back in January [1], and the general idea that regressions should be avoided and only put into place if they really warrant a sufficiently large step forward. Holger [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-January/msg00136.html ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 7:11 AM, Andreas Nilsson li...@andreasn.se wrote: On 06/30/2012 06:27 PM, Adam Dingle wrote: ** I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one ** You probably want nautilus-list for nautilus specific discussions. https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/nautilus-list - Andreas I'm well aware of nautilus-list, but chose to post here because I think there's a problem here beyond just Nautilus. In my opinion, useful features are vanishing from core GNOME apps without adequate notice to the community and opportunity for discussion by people who use those features regularly. As just one more example, last December the bookmark toolbar was suddenly removed from Epiphany: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2012-January/msg5.html I was startled to see it removed. I used the bookmark toolbar all the time and still miss it every day. adam ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
As just one more example, last December the bookmark toolbar was suddenly removed from Epiphany: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2012-January/msg5.html I was startled to see it removed. I used the bookmark toolbar all the time and still miss it every day. adam I strongly agree with you. I use Google Chrome and I always think Always show the bookmarks bar should be the default behavior. And I also object the removal of Compact View. It may not be well known but it is certainly very necessary for people addicted to this feature. Similar feature is offered in Windows Explorer for many years under the name of List. ( Windows Explorer's Detial is similar to List in Nautilus. ) ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=241e462024070d9f79f4816256fc00ff5119e25f https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676842 When I switched to GNOME back in 2006, Nautilus had only the icon and list views. At that time I felt that was a serious limitation of the GNOME desktop, since neither of these views made it easy to browse directories with lots of files in a readable way. I really wanted a view where I could reasonably see lots of files at once, with filenames stacked vertically (so I wouldn't have to scan my eyes in two dimensions in order to find a filename I wanted) and where the filenames wouldn't wrap. I spent a couple of weekends back then hacking on a compact view for Nautilus, but never found the time to quite make it work, so I rejoiced when Christian Neumair implemented a compact view in March 2008: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=b19cc7674bf16a89447de2fe9b112d5a352d233e Compare two views of the same folder zoomed to the same level of visual file density, one with text beside icons, the other in compact view. Which would you rather scan when looking for a file? text beside icons: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_icon_view.png compact view: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_compact_view.png For the last 6 years, every time I've set up a GNOME machine (certainly many dozens of times) I've set it to use compact view by default. I've often thought this should be the default for everyone. So now all I can say is this: Where was this change discussed, other than the above Bugzilla ticket which a tiny number of people saw? When were we given the opportunity to comment on this change? Why, why, why? I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured. The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. All I ask is to be informed before these features vanish and to be given the chance to say why I like them so much. adam___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
It seems like the broken labels beside icons behavior should be treated as a bug in GtkIconView that should just be fixed. On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Adam Dingle a...@yorba.org wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=241e462024070d9f79f4816256fc00ff5119e25f https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676842 When I switched to GNOME back in 2006, Nautilus had only the icon and list views. At that time I felt that was a serious limitation of the GNOME desktop, since neither of these views made it easy to browse directories with lots of files in a readable way. I really wanted a view where I could reasonably see lots of files at once, with filenames stacked vertically (so I wouldn't have to scan my eyes in two dimensions in order to find a filename I wanted) and where the filenames wouldn't wrap. I spent a couple of weekends back then hacking on a compact view for Nautilus, but never found the time to quite make it work, so I rejoiced when Christian Neumair implemented a compact view in March 2008: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=b19cc7674bf16a89447de2fe9b112d5a352d233e Compare two views of the same folder zoomed to the same level of visual file density, one with text beside icons, the other in compact view. Which would you rather scan when looking for a file? text beside icons: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_icon_view.png compact view: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_compact_view.png For the last 6 years, every time I've set up a GNOME machine (certainly many dozens of times) I've set it to use compact view by default. I've often thought this should be the default for everyone. So now all I can say is this: Where was this change discussed, other than the above Bugzilla ticket which a tiny number of people saw? When were we given the opportunity to comment on this change? Why, why, why? I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured . The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. All I ask is to be informed before these features vanish and to be given the chance to say why I like them so much. adam ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list -- Jasper ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
Fixed how? Icon view and compact view are different in numerous ways. In compact view the filenames don't wrap, they are sorted vertically rather than horizontally, columns can be variable width and scrolling is horizontal (as it really must be when filenames are stacked vertically). All of these attributes are desirable when viewing lots of files with names, and not so great when viewing icons. So if by fixed you mean made to work just like the compact view then sure, that might be OK. But that's not what happened. adam On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Jasper St. Pierre jstpie...@mecheye.net wrote: It seems like the broken labels beside icons behavior should be treated as a bug in GtkIconView that should just be fixed. On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Adam Dingle wrote: I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been removed from Nautilus: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=241e462024070d9f79f4816256fc00ff5119e25f https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676842 When I switched to GNOME back in 2006, Nautilus had only the icon and list views. At that time I felt that was a serious limitation of the GNOME desktop, since neither of these views made it easy to browse directories with lots of files in a readable way. I really wanted a view where I could reasonably see lots of files at once, with filenames stacked vertically (so I wouldn't have to scan my eyes in two dimensions in order to find a filename I wanted) and where the filenames wouldn't wrap. I spent a couple of weekends back then hacking on a compact view for Nautilus, but never found the time to quite make it work, so I rejoiced when Christian Neumair implemented a compact view in March 2008: http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=b19cc7674bf16a89447de2fe9b112d5a352d233e Compare two views of the same folder zoomed to the same level of visual file density, one with text beside icons, the other in compact view. Which would you rather scan when looking for a file? text beside icons: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_icon_view.png compact view: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_compact_view.png For the last 6 years, every time I've set up a GNOME machine (certainly many dozens of times) I've set it to use compact view by default. I've often thought this should be the default for everyone. So now all I can say is this: Where was this change discussed, other than the above Bugzilla ticket which a tiny number of people saw? When were we given the opportunity to comment on this change? Why, why, why? I'd like to end on a constructive note. I propose that GNOME adopt the following policy. No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list announcement pointing to the bug in question). I also propose that all such feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted until such discussion has occured . The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and consensus building by our community. All I ask is to be informed before these features vanish and to be given the chance to say why I like them so much. adam ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list -- Jasper ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Jasper St. Pierre jstpie...@mecheye.net wrote: It seems like the broken labels beside icons behavior should be treated as a bug in GtkIconView that should just be fixed. Don't worry about it, the text beside icons bug was fixed by removing the offending feature too. http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=6aac88928b1935c8e4f5c54a61935f05c57d740e John ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
