GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 762871
Text file preview in icon missing
Last modified: 2019-09-30 22:23:08 UTC
In Ubuntu 14.04, a text file icon would permit a modest preview of the beginning of the first few lines. This feature is a tremendous productivity boost. Ubuntu 16.04 no longer supports this feature. Please bring it back.
Please provide nautilus version information and exact steps to reproduce.
GNOME nautilus 3.14.3 Note that Ubuntu uses the Unity desktop. To reproduce the problem, right click to create a new text file icon on the desktop. Edit with gedit adding a few lines of text. Save and exit. You should but do not see a preview of the first few lines of content. See attached screenshot from Ubuntu 14.04 (GNOME nautilus 3.10.1) as an example. Here is the Ubuntu tracking system bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/nautilus/+bug/1550989
Created attachment 322784 [details] Ubuntu 14.04 desktop view of text file with preview of contents Unity desktop with GNOME nautilus 3.10.1
This is not Ubuntu specific. Confirming on Fedora 25 with GNOME 3.22.
Also confirming on Arch with GNOME 3.22/Nautilus 3.22.2.
Previously, this has been broken only for files with emblems, which was tracked in bug 697320 - once this gets fixed, it must be checked if that bug got fixed too or not.
Top left text preview was available in GNOME 2 days, but it was never expected to work by default in GNOME 3, because the default icon theme doesn't support it, as mentioned in bug 615194. However, for a while, nautilus still had the code for drawing the top left text of a file. So, it would still work for other icon themes which supported it. But that code was eventually dropped for the technical reasons expressed in commit 67fdde6a9ff2dcbe3ae25fa3e259e77a4951cc46.
On the other hand, looking at it as a user, it doesn't matter how it was implemented in the past. It can be done in a different way. In particular, there is nothing that prevents text files from having thumbnails. So, if somebody writes a thumbnailer for text files, it should just work.
Ok, and where such a feature request can be made?
Thanks for the question, it's good to elaborate on that. A text file thumbnailer can be made using the thumbnailing facilities of the gnome-desktop library. For anyone interested in working on this, the following blog post provides a nice introduction and walktrhough: https://tecnocode.co.uk/2013/10/21/writing-a-gnome-thumbnailer/
Well, my question was aiming more if it is worth it filing a new but/feature request elsewhere - this being resolve, it is most likely it will slowly fade into oblivion even with your helpful pointer.