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Bug 62524 - Let user define more than one root/top-level nodes
Let user define more than one root/top-level nodes
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: nautilus
Classification: Core
Component: [obsolete] Sidebar Panel: Tree
2.3.x
Other All
: High enhancement
: future
Assigned To: Nautilus Maintainers
Nautilus Maintainers
: 65034 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2001-10-17 15:49 UTC by Daniel Bachran
Modified: 2005-07-15 15:08 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Patch to nautilus 2.3.3 implementing tabbed roots in the tree view (26.65 KB, patch)
2003-06-08 14:01 UTC, Jürg Billeter
none Details | Review
Screenshot running patched nautilus 2.3.3 (26.60 KB, image/jpeg)
2003-06-08 14:39 UTC, Jürg Billeter
  Details
Another implementation. Roots stacked vertically. (258 bytes, image/jpeg)
2003-06-13 16:57 UTC, Christian Neumair
  Details
Another implementation. Roots stacked vertically. 2nd attempt (98.49 KB, image/jpeg)
2003-06-13 16:59 UTC, Christian Neumair
  Details

Description Daniel Bachran 2001-10-17 15:49:22 UTC
Currently the tree sidebar does only display the filesystem starting at its
root. IMHO, it would be very helpful to have more than one root (top-level)
node, not just "/". Example: the home directory of the user.

Best thing would be if the user had complete control over all root nodes.
So he could specify several root nodes with: name, location (within the
filesystem), and optionally icon.

Multiple root nodes do help quick navigation from one part of the
filesystem to another. It has the advantage that you can define all areas
of the filesystem that you are using regularly and you can quickly
open/close these dirs (along w/ all subdirs!) in order to e.g. move or copy
files from one dir to another.

I would like to be able to specify at least the following root nodes for
example:
name: "root", location: "/"
name: "home", location: "/home/gambler" (my home dir)
name: "windows", location: "/windows" (windows partition)
name: "system docs", location: "/usr/share/doc"
name: "cd", location: "/cdrom", icon: "/path/to/some/cd/rom/icon.png"

I could then open "home" and "cd" when I need to copy data to/from my
CD-ROM drive (which I do quite regularly), and when I want to have a quick
look at some docs in /usr/share/doc I could temp. close "cd" (getting all
those now unnecessary subdirs out of my way) and open "system docs" instead.
Comment 1 Peter O'Shea 2001-10-25 14:08:44 UTC
This would be a very helpful improvement.  On my system, the tree view
is useless because about 300 people's /home/$USER show up on it,
making it impossible to find my own /home.  This would make the tree
view a useful thing.  Wish I could vote for this bug!
Comment 2 Daniel Bachran 2002-03-11 10:32:15 UTC
There was a discussion on the nautilus ML, which brought up the idea
of "places" in Nautilus (see
http://lists.eazel.com/pipermail/nautilus-list/2002-January/007014.html
and the following mails for the details).

This brought up some quite good ideas, whereas I think we should not
add yet another way of doing things (like adding some buttons in the
toolbar, etc.), but this is just my opinion, of course. :)

I think this should be combined with my above idea. In fact, one of
the things that always annoyed me with the Windows Explorer was that
all these detailled trees get in the way of quickly switching my
different "places" (which I have mounted as different "network"
drives). Instead of making that same mistake (and just copying the UI)
we should add "place" tabs at the top of the tree sidebar. Thus, we
order the important places horizontally and keep them at the top of
the trees, everytime.

Each place tab could just consist of (e.g.) a large icon. The name or
location of this place is not shown, in order to reduce the required
space, but is shown as root of this tree.

When we give the user the option to define the icons (along with the
size) or to even number these instead (using digits, letters, ...), we
could not only make "places" (as stated in the original mail) happen,
but also make the tree sidebar a very good and intuitive thing to use
(just my 2 cents :).
Comment 3 Dave Bordoley [Not Reading Bug Mail] 2002-06-07 07:44:39 UTC
*** Bug 65034 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Dave Bordoley [Not Reading Bug Mail] 2002-06-07 07:47:08 UTC
Bug 65034 basically suggested adding some of the special uris as other
root nodes. My comments basically where that applications:// is the
only one that makes sense, and may be favorites if we add a favorites
folder to nautilus. Home would probably be nice too, just to make it
easier on the user.
Comment 5 Luis Villa 2002-06-08 16:52:26 UTC
Dave: well, $HOME really makes sense too. Poke around OSX a bit- some
nice choices in this regard there. You don't have to know about
anything 'above' $HOME if you don't want to, which is quite nice.
Comment 6 Dave Bordoley [Not Reading Bug Mail] 2002-06-09 04:16:31 UTC
Louie:

I agree on home, see above :) Kde has this too in it's tree. Also if
we made the list view more like the osx tree view, it would be real
nice to have multiple root nodes in it too..
Comment 7 Daniel Bachran 2002-08-15 07:28:44 UTC
I'd like to ask you again what you think of _not_ just introducing
more root nodes in the tree view (like KDE, Windows Explorer, etc.)
but to make something better (IMHO), like "tabbed trees". Have a look
at the following ASCII illustration of the sidebar:

   (Sidebar Area)          (Content Area)
+-----------------------+-----------------
| R | H | C | F |       | 
+---+   +---------------+
| daniels Home          |
+-----------------------+
| mybin                 |
| docs                  |
|   +-nautilus          |
|   +-...               |
|                       |

The upper-case letters in above example should resemble icons for:
R = the root directory, H = users home directory, C = CD drive, F =
floppy drive, possibly more of course.

"mybin", etc. are the directories in my $HOME, with a tree example
showing the directory $HOME/docs/nautilus.

The idea is to be able to quickly switch between the different
"places"  tabs by simply clicking on the icons. Advantages are that
only the relevant tree (of the current "place") is being shown, the
tree state of the different tabs could be remembered (i.e. one does
not need to collapse trees in order to get a better overview or so,
see below ;), one always sees with a quick glance what is currently
being shown, and one can very quickly change to another "place".

If we simply put more "root nodes" in the current tree and some trees
are opened, it is hard sometimes to find your "places" between all the
different open directory trees. That's how the Windows explorer works
currently (using W2k as example): the concept of "My Computer", "My
Documents", and "My Network Places" has been introduced. But after
some time I find it really hard to locate these "root nodes" between
all the expanded trees. I end up closing as many trees as possible
just to see where I am. Of course I will need these directories
eventually, so I will then open them again later.

Just my 2 cents. ;)

We could either keep this bug focussed on just introducing more "root
nodes" besides /, or we could try to aim for something more ambitious
with the "tabbed tree". If we keep this bug focussed on adding "root
nodes", I'll consider open a new bug for "tabbed trees" since I think
this would be a great advantage over the current simple tree idea with
many root nodes.

bye, daniel :)
Comment 8 Timo Aaltonen 2002-10-17 13:04:11 UTC
Daniel, that is an awesome idea. I'll vote for this. I'm using WinXP
(also), and I think explorer is currently far ahead anything linux can
throw at it, at least when trying to cope with trees =)
Comment 9 Elijah Newren 2003-05-03 17:18:30 UTC
This would be *really* nice.  Adding myself to cc and removing
GNOMEVER2.0 keyword (GNOMEVER2.3 supersedes it).
Comment 10 Jürg Billeter 2003-06-08 13:59:24 UTC
I've tried to implement something similar to the idea of Daniel
Bachran. It works quite nice - at least for the first trial.

My patch is made against nautilus 2.3.3. As my patch of Bug 82884 is
also needed, I have integrated those changes.

I've removed loading and saving of expansion states as IMO it isn't
practical together with these changes.
Comment 11 Jürg Billeter 2003-06-08 14:01:12 UTC
Created attachment 17314 [details] [review]
Patch to nautilus 2.3.3 implementing tabbed roots in the tree view
Comment 12 Mark Finlay 2003-06-08 14:19:48 UTC
Any chance of a screenshot too?
Comment 13 Jürg Billeter 2003-06-08 14:39:11 UTC
Created attachment 17316 [details]
Screenshot running patched nautilus 2.3.3
Comment 14 Elijah Newren 2003-06-09 15:00:42 UTC
Setting version to 2.3.x, adding PATCH keyword and marking priority as
high.
Comment 15 Mantas Kriaučiūnas 2003-06-12 23:14:37 UTC
Can users mount floppy, cdrom and other drives easier when this patch
is applied?
Now accessing to floppy, cdrom and other mountable drives aren't easy,
because users can mount drives in only one, not user-friendly way -
right click on desktop and select disks from context menu. This way
isn't intuitive and also isn't comfortable when you are working with
file manager, because you should go to desktop, press right mouse
button, select wanted disk driver from menu, then press with mouse on
this drive, then go back to file manager, then copy files from file
manager to disk drive, then close disk drive window (because you can't
unmount while disk drive window is open) and then unmount drive.
I think there should be tab "Mountable drives" or maybe separate tabs
for each mountable drive (this is easy to implement, because nautilus
already creates list of mountable drives when you press right click on
desktop and choose Disks).

Btw, there are any chance to include this patch in GNOME 2.4 ?
Comment 16 Timo Aaltonen 2003-06-13 12:36:52 UTC
how about putting the tabs above the tree, because the tree needs all
the horizontal space it can get..

The downside is that if you have a lot of tabs they won't fit if the
sidebar is narrow.. but maybe the ultimate solution would be to make
it configurable =)

anyway, nice screenshot!

added myself to cc
Comment 17 Christian Neumair 2003-06-13 16:55:22 UTC
FYI, there is another screenshot floating around which shows another
implementation (probably) done by Jörg I found at FootNotes [1].
Following FN postings show a positive feedback, at least up to now. 
Attaching it.

regs,
 Chris

[1]
http://gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?op=showreply&tid=12611&sid=1164&pid=12587&mode=thread&order=1&thold=-1#12611
Comment 18 Christian Neumair 2003-06-13 16:57:08 UTC
Created attachment 17516 [details]
Another implementation. Roots stacked vertically.
Comment 19 Christian Neumair 2003-06-13 16:59:02 UTC
Created attachment 17517 [details]
Another implementation. Roots stacked vertically. 2nd attempt
Comment 20 Mantas Kriaučiūnas 2003-06-13 17:16:47 UTC
Cool, another implementation with vertically stacked roots looks
better. It's like sidebar in Mozilla - comfortable and easy to understand.
I vote for implementation with vertically stacked roots :)
Comment 21 Christian Neumair 2003-06-14 10:10:59 UTC
Mantas: Bugzilla is no place for advocating a solution without giving
reasons (aka "Me too"). I just write this to prevent other users from
writing null comments.
Adding myself to CC.

regs,
 Chris
Comment 22 Alexander Larsson 2003-07-07 09:56:31 UTC
cvs has multiroots.
Comment 23 Olav Vitters 2005-07-15 15:08:05 UTC
Closing as it was reopened by accident.