GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 78789
No progress information when computing size of dirs
Last modified: 2013-11-01 13:01:03 UTC
If I go File -> Show Properties for a directory, it starts computing the number of files and the space occupied by the directory on the disk. Which is good. On the other hand, it doesn't give me a hint as to whether the computation is still in progress. So if you look at the number, you are not sure if it's going to change in another few seconds, or if it's the final one. It should probably only display the size after it's been computed instead.
I'd rather suggest having a " (still counting)", or " or more" appended to the item count, or "at least " in prepended. Usability crew, what do you think?
I quite like the "At least" suggestion, although I don't know how l10n friendly it is. Another option might be to use the > or + symbols: >115907 items, totalling >1.9 GB 115907+ items, totalling 1.9+ GB The ">" option is universal but a bit geeky; putting "+" after a number to mean "at least" is a little friendlier, but I don't know if it's in such common usage. If you went with either of those ideas, you'd probably also want to round off the file and disk space count to a few significant figures: >115000 items, totalling >1.9GB 200+ items, totalling 100+ KB otherwise it looks (slightly) silly, IMHO... a bit like a newspaper headline that reads "New Stadium to Cost Nearly $1,456,43.67" or something :)
While we're at it, we could also show orders of magnitude while counting, i.e. n >= 10^2 items, totalling >= 1*10^9 B just kidding...seriously, I think *prepending* the word "at least" shows instantly that we're not yet finished and incomplete counts IMHO don't really help if you're not interested in lower bounds, which is very uncommon for file sizes.
The same request has been made in the Ubuntu bug tracker at Launchpad. PGScooter suggested in the bug report at https://launchpad.net/bugs/386233 to indicate whether Nautilus is still updating the directory size. Instead of using words he suggested to use the animated gif throbber you'll usually find next to your mouse.
Created attachment 223797 [details] [review] Add a spinner when computing the contents of folders In the process fix a problem where we were cycling in the callbacks from file "changed" and "updated_deep_count_in_progress".
Review of attachment 223797 [details] [review]: Thanks, looks generally good to me; a couple of comments below. ::: src/nautilus-properties-window.c @@ +2121,3 @@ */ if (window->details->deep_count_finished && + g_list_length (window->details->deep_count_files) > 0) { Since g_list_length() traverses the list every time, I think it could be worth to save the length in a separate variable here. @@ +5105,3 @@ + for (l = window->details->deep_count_files; l != NULL; l = l->next) { + stop_deep_count_for_file (window, l->data); + } Should also g_list_free(window->details->deep_count_files) here I think.
Created attachment 223868 [details] [review] Add a spinner when computing the contents of folders In the process fix a problem where we were cycling in the callbacks from file "changed" and "updated_deep_count_in_progress".
Created attachment 223869 [details] [review] Only show the spinner if the deep count take longer than a second. This avoids flashing it on and off when it isn't needed.
Review of attachment 223868 [details] [review]: Looks good.
Review of attachment 223869 [details] [review]: ::: src/nautilus-properties-window.c @@ +965,3 @@ gtk_widget_hide (window->details->directory_contents_spinner); + if (window->details->deep_count_spinner_timeout_id > 0) { + g_source_remove (window->details->deep_count_spinner_timeout_id); Need to reset deep_count_spinner_timeout_id here too, or we'll possibly try to remove again the source id in real_destroy()
Created attachment 223907 [details] [review] Only show the spinner if the deep count take longer than a second. This avoids flashing it on and off when it isn't needed.
Review of attachment 223907 [details] [review]: ++
Attachment 223868 [details] pushed as 5a00dae - Add a spinner when computing the contents of folders Attachment 223907 [details] pushed as 0b79e43 - Only show the spinner if the deep count take longer than a second.
*** Bug 711256 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***