unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Brandon Watkins wrote on 03/07/12 16:09:
> 
> Gnome has started tearing out nautilus features left and right 
> during gnome 3.6 development: 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vyyw9/heads_up_on_changes_in_nautilus_for_36/,
>
> 
and making some very questionable design decisions, such as this
> incredibly ugly and pointless name shortening that makes the 
> breadcrumb impossible to read: 
> http://iloveubuntu.net/nautilus-352-landed-ubuntu-1210-new-features-and-removals
> 
To be fair, a few of the changes make sense. There's little point
having both Details view and Icon view with "Text beside icons". Split
view is redundant with semi-maximized windows as found in Unity. And
Backspace is a silly keyboard shortcut to use for anything except
deleting something small.

Some of the changes are based on the assumption that PC applications
have to "work well on touch". I think this is a fool's errand -- an
interface can either be optimized for a pointing device or optimized
for a touch-screen, not both. But Microsoft is taking the same
approach, making it harder to argue against.
<http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=ef467c8775392d0f0feb0e38f7a80f2d41719d84>

Some of the rest, though, as Federico Mena Quintero described it, is
"just vandalism".
<https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2012-July/msg00022.html>

> I think its looking like ubuntu should start looking into a new 
> default file manager, since gnome seems intent on tearing nautilus 
> apart, something like marlin (https://launchpad.net/marlin) looks 
> like it has potential.
> 
> ...

What would help, first, is for people to compile a thorough feature
comparison, both for users and contributors. (Maybe use pad.ubuntu.com
for this.) What does Nautilus still have that Marlin, or Elementary
Files, does not? What would we lose if we switched right now?

Examples for users: Connecting to SFTP servers, NFS devices, estimated
time remaining for moves/copies, remembering manual folder layouts,
auto-opening connected storage devices, secure overwriting of deleted
files, mass renaming, column views.

Examples for contributors: Development speed, public roadmap, speed of
branch review, translations, test suite.

- -- 
mpt
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