Re: spatial finder

[Michael Baehr]

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 21:20:44 +0300, Enrico Sersale <enrico@imago.ro> wrote:
> 
> On 2004-06-16 19:43:36 +0300 Rogelio M.Serrano Jr. <rogelio@smsglobal.net> 
> wrote:
> 
> > On 2004-06-16 19:45:22 +0800 Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Le 16 juin 04, à 12:35, Rogelio Serrano a écrit :
> >>>
> >>> Well can we drop the term spatial finder and just talk about saving a
> >>> search as an icon so i can click on the icon and a folder opens to show
> >>> all items found?
> >>
> >> Well, saving a search is a good idea. And indeed it has nothing to do with
> >> spatial finders.
> >>
> > Yes until we start thinking about the persistence of the search result and
> > how to update it when a new file is created or deleted. Or to search the
> > contents of the "folder" and make it persistent too and hence adding another
> > "folder" inside the original. And how to prevent "duplicating views".
> 
> I think that I know how to create these "live search folders". I'll start to 
> write something in the next weeks...
> But, even if it is probably true that, theoretically, this has nothing to do 
> with a spatial behaviour of the file viewer, I must say that it seems to me 
> that the existence of a spatial viewer would help me a lot. For the moment 
> this is only a idea, I can't explain better; but, for example, the window of 
> a opened "live search folder" will belong probably to Finder.app but it will 
> look like all the other windows of the file viewer.
> The next work in my to do list was already to rewrite the Icons Viewer and 
> the Small Icons Viewer and to unify them in a single new viewer that will use 
> the new framework written for Desktop.app (resizable icons and labels, label 
> under or at the right of the icon, settable background color, etc.). So, what 
> about doing it a "spatial" viewer? I think that I know how to make it get on 
> together very well with the browser viewer (anyway the /main/ viewer). This 
> would not be a problem.
> But, beeing this a big change, I'd want to know what the other users think. 
> Please, find five minutes for answering to this!
> 

The live search folder is an excellent idea, and I can't say I will be
surprised when you implement it, because you have added so many cool
things to gworkspace in the past few months that I longer raises an
eyebrow when another appears ;)

As for spatial viewers; I'm an old Mac OS user (been using it since
System 3 on a 512K) and I have plenty of experience and nostalgia for
the old, spatial way of navigating the file system.  However, I just
don't think it's a particularly apt metaphor for today's file system
layout; I find the gworkspace browser view to be perfectly sufficient.
 The "spatial finder" is OK for browsing certain types of directory
trees, however; I find that when I'm using my friend's machine (he is
a gnome fanboy), I use Nautilus's spatial mode to find media files,
and the browser mode for general file-system browsing.

If you do choose to implement it, I would at least take a look at how
Apple, in Panther, makes the spatial and regular Finder windows
clearly different; the regular browser windows are rendered in brushed
metal and have a sidebar, whereas the spatial windows are much
plainer.  It helps separate the two metaphors.

Cheers,

-- Mike