[Thunar-dev] Removal of the location button

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering to drop the button right next to the location entry in
Thunar. Here's a screenshot with this button highlighted in red:

Loading Image...

This button is supposed to show all volumes and bookmarks (so, whatever
is visible in the shortcuts side pane as well). Does anyone care deeply
about it or can I remove it without hurting the efficiency of anyone's
workflow?

Reasons for the removal:

* It's not that useful. All the items also show up in the side pane.

* I can't remember having clicked it a single time.

* Bookmarked folders (even remote ones) will also show up in the "Go"
menu in future versions, so together with the side pane we have two
different ways to browse them even.

* The button is not part of the location dialog either (the one which
pops up when you use the breadcrumb bar and press <Ctrl>L), so
having it in the main window is inconsistent anyway.

* The shortcuts side pane is being rewritten (see
http://wiki.xfce.org/design/thunar/shortcuts-pane for more
information) and due to changes in the code, supporting the location
button requires extra work and additional code.

So, what are your opinions?

- Jannis

[Matt McClinch]

Rather than show all volumes and bookmarks, what if it showed all parent directories instead? Would that make it more useful?

Matt

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Sun, 6 Nov 2011 23:03:09 -0500

Post by Matt McClinch
Rather than show all volumes and bookmarks, what if it showed all
parent directories instead? Would that make it more useful?

That's a valid question. It would be easy to implement but I wonder
how useful it is since you can go up to parent folders really quickly
with the up button as well.

Any opinions by others?

- Jannis

[Nick Schermer]

Post by Jannis Pohlmann
On Sun, 6 Nov 2011 23:03:09 -0500

Post by Matt McClinch
Rather than show all volumes and bookmarks, what if it showed all
parent directories instead? Would that make it more useful?

That's a valid question. It would be easy to implement but I wonder
how useful it is since you can go up to parent folders really quickly
with the up button as well.
Any opinions by others?

All the parents are shown (pathbar buttons or in the entry), I don't
think this is useful. If you want to show something better those the
other children of the folder; but that sounds more like a new path bar
ala windows 7.

Nick

[Simon Steinbeiß]

Hi everyone,

I'm all for removing that button, I can also say that I never clicked/used it. (And as others mentioned, it feels more like it'd show history or file-hierarchy than just the shortcuts.)
If at a later point other additional functionality should be added, at least there's enough free space to add something new in the toolbar then :)

Cheers,
Simon

[Nick Schermer]

?* I can't remember having clicked it a single time.

Sounds like a valid and well-argumented reason to drop it. +1 for me.

Nick

[Stephan Arts]

Post by Nick Schermer

?* I can't remember having clicked it a single time.

Sounds like a valid and well-argumented reason to drop it. +1 for me.

I agree, today is the first time I pressed it, and I did not expect to
see the shortcuts there. I expected a history, or a list of parent-
and grandparent-folders. But definitely no shortcuts.

When I read Jannis' comment on IRC, I have been looking around the
thunar interface for 20sec before I found the button. And then I still
had doubts if I had the right one. Thanks for the screenshot, it helps
:-)

Stephan

[Maximilien Noal]

Post by Stephan Arts

Post by Nick Schermer

Post by Jannis Pohlmann
* I can't remember having clicked it a single time.

Sounds like a valid and well-argumented reason to drop it. +1 for me.

I agree, today is the first time I pressed it, and I did not expect to
see the shortcuts there. I expected a history, or a list of parent-
and grandparent-folders. But definitely no shortcuts.
When I read Jannis' comment on IRC, I have been looking around the
thunar interface for 20sec before I found the button. And then I still
had doubts if I had the right one. Thanks for the screenshot, it helps
:-)
Stephan
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Same here, without the screenshot I was lost.

[Benedikt Meurer]

Post by Nick Schermer

Post by Jannis Pohlmann
* I can't remember having clicked it a single time.

Sounds like a valid and well-argumented reason to drop it. +1 for me.

+1

Post by Nick Schermer
Nick

Benedikt

[Harald Judt]

What's more, sometimes reloading does not even work. I experienced this
using network shares (CIFS mounts). Only closing and opening thunar
helps here, looks like thunar caches the file size somehow, and the
cache is not invalidated when reloading. Unfortunately, I couldn't find
out how to reproduce this.

After thinking about this once more, could this be a gvfs bug and not a
bug in thunar? But then, gvfs is not used for CIFS mounts, right? I
don't know enough about how thunar handles caching files and folders to
draw conclusions here.

I also noticed that thumbnails are not regenerated immediately when a
custom script changes a file, e.g. rotates the image. Instead, a generic
JPEG icon is shown until one scrolls up or down so that the icon
disappears and reappears, or goes back and forward in history.

Has anyone experienced similar behaviour?

Harald

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:09:39 +0100

Post by Harald Judt

What's more, sometimes reloading does not even work. I experienced
this using network shares (CIFS mounts). Only closing and opening
thunar helps here, looks like thunar caches the file size somehow,
and the cache is not invalidated when reloading. Unfortunately, I
couldn't find out how to reproduce this.

After thinking about this once more, could this be a gvfs bug and not
a bug in thunar? But then, gvfs is not used for CIFS mounts, right? I
don't know enough about how thunar handles caching files and folders
to draw conclusions here.

Yes, it's an issue in GVfs, which handles the "smb" URI scheme. For
some schemes, GVfs does not support or implement file monitoring. This
may be due to limitations of the underlying protocols but it could as
well be missing functionality in GVfs (I'm no SMB expert, so I can't
tell). We can partially work around that by triggering automatic
folder reloads whenever something changes within in Thunar. But as soon
as folders or files are modified by other applications, things will get
out of sync, unfortunately.

Post by Harald Judt
I also noticed that thumbnails are not regenerated immediately when a
custom script changes a file, e.g. rotates the image. Instead, a
generic JPEG icon is shown until one scrolls up or down so that the
icon disappears and reappears, or goes back and forward in history.
Has anyone experienced similar behaviour?

That could well be. Can you file a bug so we don't forget about this?

- Jannis

[Harald Judt]

Post by Jannis Pohlmann
On Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:09:39 +0100

Post by Harald Judt

What's more, sometimes reloading does not even work. I experienced
this using network shares (CIFS mounts). Only closing and opening
thunar helps here, looks like thunar caches the file size somehow,
and the cache is not invalidated when reloading. Unfortunately, I
couldn't find out how to reproduce this.

After thinking about this once more, could this be a gvfs bug and not
a bug in thunar? But then, gvfs is not used for CIFS mounts, right? I
don't know enough about how thunar handles caching files and folders
to draw conclusions here.

Yes, it's an issue in GVfs, which handles the "smb" URI scheme. For
some schemes, GVfs does not support or implement file monitoring. This
may be due to limitations of the underlying protocols but it could as
well be missing functionality in GVfs (I'm no SMB expert, so I can't
tell). We can partially work around that by triggering automatic
folder reloads whenever something changes within in Thunar. But as soon
as folders or files are modified by other applications, things will get
out of sync, unfortunately.

I think I caused some confusion here. I don't think it's related to gvfs
because it is mounted via fstab and I'm not using smb:// in location
bar, so it's mounted like a local filesystem - via mount command. What I
was speculating about was whether you use gvfs for the local filesystem,
too, perhaps for caching information, so then this could be an issue.
When I type ls in terminal, it shows the correct size, but in thunar
information is not updated correctly until I restart it.

Post by Jannis Pohlmann

Post by Harald Judt
I also noticed that thumbnails are not regenerated immediately when a
custom script changes a file, e.g. rotates the image. Instead, a
generic JPEG icon is shown until one scrolls up or down so that the
icon disappears and reappears, or goes back and forward in history.
Has anyone experienced similar behaviour?

That could well be. Can you file a bug so we don't forget about this?

In fact, I can do so, and I can even provide a test case for this.
Sometimes the old thumbnail will be used, as if the change had not been
detected. I thought about proposing thunar should reload the folder
automatically after a custom action has been performed. Unfortunately,
it seems reloading the folder does not really reload anything here.
Additionally, this won't fix reloading when someone changes the file in
a terminal.

Does not tumbler have its own caching mechanism too? Maybe then tumbler
is at fault, not thunar? How could I test this, or how could one force
tumbler to regenerate its cache?

(I think I'm getting off-topic now, sorry for that.)

Harald