McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus] [LWN.net]

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 4:19 UTC (Fri) by tchernobog (guest, #73595) [Link] (14 responses)

> Based on the article, it seems that just typing activates search in all subfolders.
>
> This is WRONG: typing must result in selecting the first file in the current view/folder that has the typed text as a prefix (or perhaps anywhere in the name, although that differs from Windows Explorer).

I understand the problem, especially if you have a lot of files. Maybe someone should point it out *politely*, by writing to the designer team mailing list, presenting their use-case.

> Oh and the side tree view is in Windows Explorer (the file manager 90%+ of computer users are most familiar with) since 1992, and is a fundamental feature, so it really takes a madman to even consider removing it.

I don't know if it is so fundamental. For instance, in Windows Explorer it's not enforced at all, and I think it's something like 10 years since I last used this feature. The default view is the icon one. The Mac OS X Finder uses a list mode, and you can browse one branch of the tree at a time.

When I am presented with the tree view, I find it cluttered, but maybe it has something to do with the choice of the initial nodes for the tree rather than anything else. Or maybe because I have to remember also at which level is the stuff I am searching for, introducing a third dimension - while I could achieve normally the same stuff by opening two separate windows. (By the way, someone remembers the "spatial window" mode forced upon users in GNOME 2.something? *THAT* was criminal).

The main reason I can think about justifying the need to put a file manager in tree mode, is for moving files in different directories; however the "Move to" and "Create directory" new features should address most of the use cases for that.

The tree view also has a number of usability issues; a notable one is that it requires some dexterity with the mouse, especially to click on the expanding triangle. For experts, this is not an issue, but for beginners and impaired people it's not nice. Also, it works bad with touch screens.

Nevertheless, I agree that keeping it should not be a huge problem. Dropping it seems to be just silly; it shouldn't take gazillions of lines of code to be maintained (else, there's something very wrong with nautilus...).

Incidentally: in 1992 I was still using tapes for loading programs, and BBS - not Internet - were the rage... We evolve, sometimes we get it right, sometimes not, but it's better trying than stagnating. After all, you still have MATE or XFCE if you prefer to use those, no? Installing them from the package manager is easy enough.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 4:35 UTC (Fri) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (11 responses)

I think it's kind of essential to have a tree view when navigating a hierarchy, so you can, you know, see where you are in the hierarchy and navigate through it.

Like, for example, say you are in the "build" directory of a source tree.

The tree view then tells you immediately that there is also a "source" directory and a "docs" directory, where they are, and that the program is in a folder with the source of other programs, and you immediately learn the name of those other programs, and can go visit them easily with a single click.

Personally, I don't think "Copy to" and "Move to" specifically needs a tree view, since you can just Ctrl+C, navigate to destination, Ctrl+V (well, until the GNOME 3 geniuses remove the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V shortcuts, which I'm sure they will if not stopped before since they "don't work with touch").

Some people might prefer to drag or Ctrl+drag files to entries in the tree view though, which is another reason to not remove established features.

> The tree view also has a number of usability issues; a notable one is that it requires some dexterity with the mouse, especially to click on the expanding triangle.

Well, this is probably a good point, but the solution is to make the triangle bigger relative to the entry, expand the clickable area in the whitespace to the left and/or make the entries taller, not to remove the feature!

You don't cut off someone's head because he has an headache.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 6:23 UTC (Fri) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link]

> Personally, I don't think "Copy to" and "Move to" specifically needs a
> tree view, since you can just Ctrl+C, navigate to destination, Ctrl+V
> (well, until the GNOME 3 geniuses remove the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V shortcuts,
> which I'm sure they will if not stopped before since they "don't work
> with touch").

Hmm, you mean, doing something stupid like not sending SIGINIT and LNEXT respectively?

I don't give a damn whether windows does it, but there are enough modifier keys on a keyboard that "copy" and "paste" can be assigned something else (like "command-C", as MacOS X does it).

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 6:40 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (8 responses)

> I think it's kind of essential to have a tree view when navigating a hierarchy, so you can, you know, see where you are in the hierarchy and navigate through it.

You got that wrong buddy. You _do_ _not_ want to see where you are at all. Never. Ever!

See, Gnome Shell comes with similar "improvements", such as removal of (at least) a decade old workspace switcher. This decade old workspace switcher could tell you where you were just by glancing at it. No action required at all. Just turn your eyes to where it sits and voilà - you know.

The new behaviour is far better, you see. You have to travel with the mouse up the top (nah - just use the keyboard - they'll tell you), then either wait or click, then travel to the right to actually see the workspaces, after they "slide out". Soo much better!

So, here is what you need to do. You need to work with one file at the time, using one program at the time. OK? Because, that's the new paradigm.

;-)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 7:05 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> So, here is what you need to do. You need to work with one file at the time, using one program at the time. OK? Because, that's the new paradigm.

STOP! Don't give them new ideas!

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 18:55 UTC (Fri) by sciurus (guest, #58832) [Link] (1 responses)

Too late, there's aleady http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/GNOME

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 18:59 UTC (Fri) by sciurus (guest, #58832) [Link]

On second thought, that page is much more offensive than I remembered, so you may not want to click. This is a shame, since it has some gems like "The ultimate GNoal for the GNOME desktop is to completely make users obsolete by eventually removing support for user input devices, instead, opting for simply allowing the user to view several pixels at random."

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 9:05 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

> You got that wrong buddy. You _do_ _not_ want to see where you are at all. Never. Ever!

You have your current path displayed at the top of the window.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 9:56 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (3 responses)

I think you may want to read the post I was replying to again. There is more to it than current path, obviously.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 18:56 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

I see.

In the case of copy and paste were you don't want to navigate to another directory in the original dialog; you must have at least two windows open. One with the path of the source and another with the path to the destination.

Tree view, while it may be a nice feature, is certainly not required to keep track of multiple paths in a graphical manner.

I am not defending the removal of the tree view or diminishing the desire of others to have such a feature. I am just saying that it's certainly not required to keep track of locations as I have not been aware that Nautilus supported tree view for many many years and it has never occurred to me that it's missing any functionality nor has it diminished my ability to copy and paste between different directories.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 1:22 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

Just like you, I do not use tree view. That does not mean it is not useful to someone else. I recognise and respect that.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:20 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I am glad we agree on that point.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 13:35 UTC (Fri) by kh (guest, #19413) [Link]

If you leave people tree view, they won't be forced to use your new search, duh! In the next version we may be able to get rid of folders altogether. Search, don't organize!

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 7:14 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I don't know if it is so fundamental. For instance, in Windows Explorer it's not enforced at all, and I think it's something like 10 years since I last used this feature. The default view is the icon one. The Mac OS X Finder uses a list mode, and you can browse one branch of the tree at a time.

You are looking in the wrong direction.

There are two audiences: developers and so-called end-users (content-consumers, mostly). For developers tree view is absolutely vital (compare IDEs of 20 years ago which had no tree view or very rudimentary tree view and today's IDEs which invariably put tree view of the project as the cornerstone of it's look and feel). For end users it's still not as important (both iOS and Android hide even the fact that you have some filesystem on your device from casual user).

Now, if GNOME removes such fundamental features then it's clear signal that it does not care about developers—but the problem here lies with the fact that there are no casual users on Linux: there are no games, no accounting programs, etc. The end result: system which is good for [almost] nobody. It clearly abandoned it's existing audience but it's built for an OS which makes it basically unusable for the Joe Average. The end result? Something bad for everybody. Either GNOME developers need to stop pretending they care about developers and start developing/embracing OS-for-the-content-consumers or they should return things like tree view which developer's value highly.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 1:29 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I still haven't managed to find an acceptable linux equivalent for Windows Explorer's tree view...

For those people who like it, it's a very important feature.

Cheers,
Wol

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 4:22 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (42 responses)

I think that at this point your just making up stuff to rant about. I don't see anywhere that mentions subfolders or any such thing.

I personally like 'type ahead find' were I can just type what I want and search through things. But indeed with Nautilus it is less useful then it should be for numerous reasons, many of which are mentioned in the article. Hopefully they will have something to replace it with similar-but-better functionality.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 5:33 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (41 responses)

Nope. Slashdot is totally correct, I have the new version of Nautilus and typing indeed starts searching everywhere in the subfolders.

Works REALLY nice with my "work" subfolder. Not.

This is so unbelievably stupid that I have just apt-get removed Nautilus from my computer. I don't want it to be defiled with this POS.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 7:01 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (30 responses)

That does sound terrible.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 8:44 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (29 responses)

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 9:38 UTC (Fri) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (28 responses)

Quite a depressing read ...

Rehdon

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 12:00 UTC (Fri) by billev2k (subscriber, #32054) [Link] (27 responses)

Depressing, indeed. I really can't imagine what these folks are thinking.

Yes, search is really useful, and a good, cool, fast search feature is a great thing. And it is completely orthogonal to navigation within a directory. AND I'm willing to bet money that search is *much* less frequently desired than navigation, once one has found where they're working.

So, yes, add a great search! Even give a shortcut key and button to start it. But let me say "Nautilus, please find this for me".

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 12:38 UTC (Fri) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (26 responses)

What I found most depressing: the attitude of the devs who answered. I mean, the guy who opened the bug report surely wasn't ranting, he explained his points really well, and even if the last paragraph might look ad hominem it actually wasn't (the question "is anyone doing a thorough review of these ideas or is this a one man show?" is perfectly legitimate IMHO, especially on the basis of McCann's post). And what happens? here comes the Gnome police:

"Please keep comments technical and do not get personal by criticizing
particular developers for changes that you describe rather generically."

Conveniently ignoring all the technical explanation and focusing on one sentence with the clear intent to discourage further elaboration of the issue.

Have seen that happen elsewhere, even here on LWN. Reading that kind of reaction makes me feel like I'm staring deep into the abyss...

Rehdon

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 16:45 UTC (Fri) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (1 responses)

Political correctness often enters when the desire is to deflect rather than engage in a discussion. The larger discussion of how the remaining Gnome team is actually deciding these issues is entirely legitimate, but one which they'd apparently prefer to remain opaque. It's a bitter feedback loop, because these processes tend to alienate people other than the "true believers" -- who alienate the rest, when their true belief has little to do with the world of users. That's why it's important to engage.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:35 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

The people looking after the style of communication are not the developers, nor designers. They are the bugmasters. Further, the reporter in bug 680118 is a GNOME triager.

Anyway, your summary of how GNOME behaves is plain wrong.

If you think that you should be allowed to behave inappropriately, then you'll be warned and if you continue, banned. During the warning we make it explicitly clear that the opinion is of no interest, just the style of communication. Meaning: we don't care one bit if you're pro or con. I actually prefer con, because all kinds of "+1s" is just wasteful.

If you think that behaving inappropriately (e.g. insults) will make anyone receptive to what you're saying... then, cool, but don't try to do that on a GNOME server.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:25 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (23 responses)

Conveniently ignoring all the technical explanation and focusing on one sentence with the clear intent to discourage further elaboration of the issue.

At GNOME Bugzilla we're not going to split the technical bits from the non constructive comments. If you cannot say things politely, you'll be warned and eventually banned.

Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118#c18.

I don't see that as a valuable comment.

Feel free to disagree on someone elses server.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:40 UTC (Sat) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (4 responses)

> Feel free to disagree on someone elses server.

Or just use someone else's software, so the problem doesn't come up in the first place...

BTW, since you appear to be someone involved with GNOME 3, how about starting some sort of motion to get rid of the Nautilus maintainer Cosimo Cecchi?

He's clearly totally incompetent: why don't you revoke his commit privileges and find someone else instead?

I mean, the idiocy of the maintainer is clearly the real "bug" there, and it's not possible to productively discuss technical issues if the ultimate judge of them is a moron.

Although I guess that since the disease probably runs deeper in the GNOME 3 leadership, it's likely going to be hard to find someone willing to work with the rest of those guys, so you probably should just get rid of all current maintainers and anyone else currently holding leadership positions.

I mean, it's not that much of an issue because all users will eventually switch away and GNOME will eventually die and be replaced, but it's a real pity to see GNOME, which once was THE free software desktop, go down this way.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 22:05 UTC (Sat) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (3 responses)

I sure hope that people are aware that behavior like yours is what leads to GNOME developers not caring one bit about negative feedback.

If feedback is filled to the brim with trolls, rudeness, insults and plain hate, there is only 2 ways to live with it:
(1) Ignore it.
(2) Don't take it serious.
Which is the primary reason why feedback from sites like LWN rarely makes its way into the GNOME community.

In case you don't understand what I'm talking about: Talking about trying to "get rid of" someone or otherwise claiming someone is harmful certainly requires solid arguments. In particular it requires research into the whys of their behavior and having a clue what the problems actually are.

I sure wish there were people in here that had the audacity to get people like you to shut up.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 1:25 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, you have someone who, using their maintainer position, does this:
1. Removes an already implemented highly established feature also present in Windows Explorer and most other applications where it makes sense to have it
2. Replaces it with nothing or with a feature with an UI that is different from all other similar software and that cannot cover all use cases as well or better (as argued by users)
3. Doesn't provide a detailed rationale of the exceptional circumstance resulting in some great advantage in doing this that offsets all the disadavntages
4. Causes several users to complain about the above
5. Doesn't either reconsider, announce he's thinking about it or explain exactly why the decision is good despite the huge negatives

This applies to both type ahead find, sidebar tree view and the compact view he recently approved the removal of.

I think that's not what you want from a maintainer, ESPECIALLY when said project already has issues with having a sizeble fraction of its former GNOME 2 users no longer liking it and vocally criticizing it.

And no, McCann's post doesn't really explain at all why the changes are a good tradeoff: he incorrectly states that all use cases are preserved, fails to even consider how easily existing users and prospective users now using Windows will understand and cope with the changes and that "Sometimes is just not possible to add new functionality without first making some room" (which is just bullshit, as software can grow without limits).

Now, of course, if you can get him and other people acting similarly to change to more effective behavior, that's good, but otherwise replacing them seems advisable.

Especially if these people are paid to work full-time, since that means you can just hire a random good programmer instead and tell him to get up to speed on the project, and don't need to actually hope someone fills the spot on his own accord.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 9:54 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

"Sometimes is just not possible to add new functionality without first making some room" (which is just bullshit, as software can grow without limits).

Your keyboard has an infinite number of keys on it? The room he was talking about was room in the user interface, not room in the code. You can't both have plain alphanumeric typing do a search-names-in-current-dir and search-subtree-recursively. That's a shortage of room in this sense.

(The changes sound quite horrible to me too, but that doesn't make your reasoning any less flawed.)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 10:52 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

Well, but features don't have to be keybound, so the only true statement is that "Sometimes you cannot add a new easy-to-hit keyboard shortcut without removing an existing easy-to-hit keyboard shortcut", which is very true (to the hindrance of many gamers).

At any rate, if both the previous and the new key binding schemes are useful, an option to choose between them can be added.

But that's probably not the case here, where keeping the current behavior and ADDING a search box on the top right and a keybind (Firefox uses Ctrl+K, not sure if it conflicts with something in Nautilus) seems by far the most reasonable course of action.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 6:50 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (7 responses)

"Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118#c18."

That's not true: the comment I quoted is comment n. 2, and it's the first comment by a Gnome dev to the bug reporter. Your policy makes sense, and comment n. 18 adds only noise to the bug discussion (polluting a technical discussion thread is surely reason enough for a warning and even a ban), but I don't think you can say the same thing about the bug report itself, not at all. A warning about your "politeness reporting", and even a link to the Gnome conduct code as first comment by a dev sounds like a clear "we don't want to hear about this" message to me. Fortunately McCann answered and the discussion could be started, but as you can see the reporter was clearly disheartened by this reaction.

My 0,02€, feel free to disagree on any server.

Rehdon

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 8:58 UTC (Mon) by andre47 (guest, #86127) [Link] (6 responses)

The comment was NOT by a dev. The comment was by a bugmaster (me). As I am a bugmaster and not a dev I won't comment on the report content itself if I don't have enough background.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 5:59 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (4 responses)

That's just semantic hair-splitting. If you're the bugmaster, you're involved in Gnome development, even if you don't code a line of Gnome libs/apps. Perhaps what you meant was "I'm not a programmer", which is not relevant to this discussion.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 9:30 UTC (Tue) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (3 responses)

Quite, but again another response of the same character - not to engage with the issue at all, but to try to find any tiny, arguably not even real, little nit to pick at to deflect, derail and discourage.

I have to say, on a somewhat personal note, that this seems to be André's thing - he used to be involved in the same process in the Maemo project, treating bug reports as attacks to be fended off rather than contributions to be made use of.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 10, 2012 23:59 UTC (Fri) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (2 responses)

Ah, the venerable Mr. Klapper. I remember my one (and only) communication with this kind soul; I asked him a question that got me a ban on gnome bugzilla (for trolling).

Do note, that the politeness is apparently not required from developers, bugmasters and other GNOME bureaucrats; Mr Klapper's answer to polite question about implementing SIEVE support in Evolution was rather curt: Nobody works on this and nobody plans to. Patches welcome.

It's a pity that many GNOME people seem to be organically unable to do something that was quite obvious to Philip Hazel (ex-maintainer of Exim):

Writing/maintaining software is providing a service (even when it's free). You need to listen to your customers if you want to learn what features they need and thereby improve your product. Of course, the customer isn't _always_ right, and often they suggest specific implementations which don't fit into the "grand scheme", but it's the input of ideas which is important. Even if they seem at first to be "wrong", I've found it's always worth thinking about them, even if you ultimate modify or reject them.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 11, 2012 8:55 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, the difference there is that Phil Hazel has instinctive charm and courtesy and is pleasant to pretty much everyone by default. This is a very rare trait and most people don't have it.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 13, 2012 1:39 UTC (Mon) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

The main difference, IMHO, lies in that Philip Hazel is a professional. The GNOME folks, on the other hand, have a long way to go until they start to match his level of professionality.

Unfortunately they were handed a decision power before they got a chance to learn, and now we're seeing the same pattern repeated for the last few years: development is ruled by fiat, features are excised on a whim, many decisions seem to enjoy the quality of a revelation, dissenters are trolls, and presented use cases are dismissed (with users sometimes being told to stop trolling).

Of course, the paradigms change every few years (or with every second maintainer), what does not change is the surety of the developers and the swiftness of banhammer wielded by the – very appropriately named – bugmasters.

(Does anyone still remember the Great Spatial Paradigm being the One True Way?)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 6:36 UTC (Tue) by jonasj (guest, #44344) [Link]

> The comment was NOT by a dev. The comment was by a bugmaster (me).

Then it's funny that the bug tracker in question refers to you as "André Klapper [developer]" :-)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 23:52 UTC (Sun) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (9 responses)

"Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to [...]"

No, it wasn't. It was comment #2, the first response to the original bug reporter, who had already stuck to technical matters. It was a blatant attempt to derail the report and squash legitimate criticism. Your dishonest response here does neither you, nor GNOME, any favours at all.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 9:51 UTC (Mon) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link] (7 responses)

> "Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to [...]"
>
> No, it wasn't. It was comment #2, the first response to the original bug reporter, who had already stuck to technical matters.

It was a direct response to "Is there anybody here that stops and thinks whether everything that Jon McCann thinks up is a good idea?"

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 10:31 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link] (6 responses)

> It was a direct response to "Is there anybody here that stops and thinks whether everything that Jon McCann thinks up is a good idea?"
Sounds like a purely technical question, to me. Would it have been somehow less offensive if he had rephrased to omit mention of the name of the person who thought up the idea that lead to the technically horrible change?

Try this on for size: "Is there anybody whose responsibility it is to review whether the changes recommended by designers are good for the application?" Is that better? Although I can't see the value in not naming the person, I suppose this sounds more politically correct.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 16:57 UTC (Mon) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (5 responses)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Both the original question and your rephrasing qualify as that. One uses the name, the other uses "the designers".

The correct question would be:
"Is there anybody whose responsibility it is to review whether recommended changes are good for the application?"

And that sounds very much like a rhetorical question to me.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 17:45 UTC (Mon) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

> Both the original question and your rephrasing qualify as that.

Posting a link that refutes your own claim is a pretty poor show if you're trying to get others to share your opinion.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 0:11 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (1 responses)

I am sorry. Try this:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 10:35 UTC (Tue) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

Please come back once you have learned basic reading comprehension; you're embarrassing yourself.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 10:50 UTC (Tue) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (1 responses)

That's not an "ad hominem" attack, it's a question about how the GNOME development organization works.

Although a more pertinent question would be "is there anyone outside the GNOME clique that checks whether the maintainers of GNOME applications do a good job?"

And that's indeed rhetorical, since clearly there's no one checking.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 23:32 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

It's an ad hominem because it explicitly mentions Jon McCann after pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of him (namely: All your whining i this whole thread). Granted, it's somewhat more complicated than the usual your mom jokes.

Also, there are various instances outside of GNOME that check whether the maintainers of GNOME applications do a good job. In fact, you are doing that in this thread. It's a side effect of open development.

What you're really after is this: Who is doing anything when GNOME developers mess up?

And that is happening. Those people enjoy Unity, KDE and XFCE. At least if you believe what they're writing everywhere.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 10:04 UTC (Mon) by colo (guest, #45564) [Link]

It really is sad in a way, but this is _exactly_ what the bug's comment history and the reaction to it in this thread made me think, too.

I'm afraid GNOME's fate is already sealed, and it's not a pretty one.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 10:35 UTC (Fri) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link] (5 responses)

Searching in subfolders is useful for a lot of people and they could easily solve your problem by ranking the search results properly.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 13:41 UTC (Fri) by efraim (guest, #65977) [Link] (4 responses)

This is so absolutely hilarious: What once have been a fundamental navigational operation - walking a directory tree, typing first few letters to get down to the next level - now turned into an adventure, where at each step I should, quoting, "rank my search results properly."

Hell, I did not even notice this operation had search results previously. Like I did not notice mousing over to file or moving my hand to a steering wheel had search results. It was absolutely instinctive.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 15:07 UTC (Fri) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link] (3 responses)

You seem confused by my comment - the ranking of the search results is done by the logic implemented in the program. You're free to modify it, being open source and all, but while using the program you don't need to think about that logic. It just works.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 20:55 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

Say I am browsing a directory using nautilus.

I have 500 files in there.

How do I, using the new search method, go down the files that start with 'n' and then navigate up and down to see the files that start with l, m, o, and p? Using almost any file manager it's a lightening fast affair.

How can I do that quickly in Nautilus with out forcing myself to visually scroll up and down the directory to find 'n' manually?

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 13:09 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Or, I'm browsing my NFS-mounted home directory. It's got about fifty directories at the top level and a quarter of a million files in it. I type a couple of letters to get to the right directory, and WHAM the thing freezes for ages while it does a massive find(1) (because tracker plus NFS do not get on, though for that we have the local-VFS-reporting-only idiocy of inotify/dnotify to thank -- I keep meaning to implement something network-aware on top of them, but have never got around to it.)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 24, 2012 20:16 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

Wouldn't it be better to index those files on the file server, and query its "indexing server" over the network? Having 100s or 1000s of PCs in a company each crawl the multi-terrabyte (or probably even bigger) NFS server to make their own private index of it doesn't sound like a very optimal solution to me…

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:38 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

It is indeed really really slow in the current version. That is not how it should be in the stable version; then it should be quick.

Suggest to give a bit of leeway to unstable versions. They're called unstable versions for a reason. Do file bugs of course (in case they haven't been filed, else cc to the existing bug).

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 14:20 UTC (Sun) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link] (1 responses)

> It is indeed really really slow in the current version. That is not how it should be in the stable version; then it should be quick.

And if (or should I say "When"?) it's not? Will the changes all be reverted at that time, or will the "fix" be to wait and see if it can be made faster and/or for people who have a problem stop complaining?

> Suggest to give a bit of leeway to unstable versions.

Leeway requires trust and that, I think, is something that is in short supply where GNOME is concerned.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 21:53 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

And is "quick" going to require running a indexing service that will destroy any vestige of speed and responsiveness remaining in the system?

When indexing daemons can make an 8 core system with a SSD feel like a 486, they had better not be required because they are going to be disabled and removed pronto, unless the desktop environment is simply abandoned instead.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 23:30 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

>It is indeed really really slow in the current version. That is not how it should be in the stable version; then it should be quick.
My 'work' folder has about 12 million files in pretty deep trees. There's no way to search them fast enough. And I'm not running any indexing service (not even the venerable updatedb) nor I'm going to run them. Is it going to become mandatory?

What's next, mandatory Facebook accounts? Or perhaps DBUS over Twitter protocol?

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 5:34 UTC (Fri) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

And here's an intelligent user correctly arguing WHY things are like this and keeping this behavior is good:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2012-August...

Of course, again, this is extremely basic stuff, and honestly, a UI designer that cannot realize this needs to take up gardening instead (where they'll probably be as bad, but at least they are going to ruin their own garden only).