GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 68349
Display extended attributes in List view
Last modified: 2021-06-18 15:56:10 UTC
Part of bug 68347. When viewing a directory in List view, query the files which attributes they have and create one column for each attribute found, then populate the columns as you find info (not all files in the dir necessarily have the same set of attributes). Allow user to hide/show certain columns and to persist the decision for this dir / all dirs. I have not yet figured out a good UI for the other views (icon etc.).
Compare BeOS file manager
Do you have a use case for this or a list of example attributes that you need to see in list view? How would this work in icon view? Is just showing these attributes in the properties dialog enough?
> Do you have a use case for this See: > > Part of bug 68347. > Do you have ... example attributes that you need to see in list view? Songs: Artist, Title, Rating Emails: Subject, Author, Recipients, Unread, Has Attachment, Was replied to Pictures: Resolution, Place File systems (/dev): format, readable > How would this work in icon view? Is just showing these > attributes in the properties dialog enough? This bug is only about List View. I don't think the icon view would use this, or if so, as additional small grey text underneath the file name. No, the properties dialog is definitely not enough. The whole purpose of the attributes is to find the right file quickly, and to be able to sort files based on it, e.g. sort Emails by Subject or Sender, sort songs by Artist, Title or Rating etc.
How do you imagine these things would work when mixed together in a directory or view? Can you provide a mockup?
> Do you have ... example attributes that you need to see in list view? Please note that these are just examples. Which attributes show should not be hardcoded in Nautilus, but be determined by whatever app (or user-created script) writes the extended attributes in the filesystem. This entirely decouples the information provider from the viewer, the former can be entirely independent from Nautilus, using only Unix standards. > How do you imagine these things would work ...? Can you provide a mockup? I can't provide a mockup due to lack of tools, but the EAs would simply be additional columns in the list view, in addition to the existing columns for size, filetype etc.. The user should be able to rearrange the columns and the file viewer remember (globally) the column position of that attribute. If there are pictures and songs mixed in one directory, all columns show (superset of all EAs of all files in that directory) and the non-applying cells (e.g. Picture has no Artist EA) are empty.
Here's a screenshot of the BeOS file manager (!) http://www.birdhouse.org/betips/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/trackerbase.gif It acts as an email reader. All that's needed to make the file manager a usable email reader is 1) showing EAs and remembering the column positions 2) some script that writes the EAs for the emails (trivial).
Dropping the NEEDINFO status, as the questions have been answered.
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