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Maybe a picture of a Panda and a Grizzly would have been more to your point, if indeed a point was implied, other than the ability to find pictures of file managers on the intarweb. Was this a refutation, a reinforcement, or a redirection?

The Gnome developers have made a concious decision to not shove everything-and-the-kitchen-sink into nautilus. Its a chicken an egg problem, while users are not used to the "everythings an object" philosophy why muddle the functionality of nautilus, which currently works really well as a file manager, leaving applications to deal with the objects.

Look how it worked out in windows XP. They made the shell function as an image viewer. In Vista they have now backed this out and ship an image viewer application.

Its a tough one because where do you draw the line? Do you put a simple text editor in nautilus, what about a image viewer, what about a music player, what about gaim, hey what about evolution, cause emails are files-are-objects. I am being rediculous but you see my point......

If you just shoved every feature under the sun into Nautilus then pretty soon you would end up with, gee i dunno, Konqueror ;-)

But I do agree that nautilus extension API could do with a rethink. Make the whole thing more pluggable. At least then the users have easier ways to plug what they want into nautilus

Its a tough one because where do you draw the line? Do you put a simple text editor in nautilus, what about a image viewer, what about a music player, what about gaim, hey what about evolution, cause emails are files-are-objects. I am being rediculous but you see my point......

That's just the thing. You never draw "the line". You keep the metaphor consistent. The whole concept of "applications" is broken to begin with, but thats an other story.

"Nautilus should be able to handle music albums, photo albums, play lists, autotools projects and that kind of stuff. It should be able to manage my source code projects as UML class diagrams."

The day that nautilus makes all those things I will leave it and will look for a new file manager.

If you want an all in one tool you must search in a diferent place, nautilus is a "FILE MANAGER" and it must manage files, not file content.

Edited 2006-05-13 16:10

And what is a file?

Why do you want to "manage" files?

From what I've hear files are a system abstraction. A unified interface to the underlying system. Now the unix thing about "everything is a file" might ba good way to keep the system consistent, flexible and usable. But then everything should BE files. Contacts, albums, emails, links, playlists. And a file manager should thus be the interface to the system.

If EVERYTHING really is a file, then the file manager would manage EVERYTHING. If not, well the metaphor is broken, and the file manager has no place at all in the user interface.

The UNIX tools traditionally are small and specifyc for one task. They only do ONE simple task and you combine them to make more complex task.

The file manager task is to manage files (copy, move, delete, set file permissions, create directorys, and that kind of things).

As you say everything is a file, but each file CONTENT is different and you use a DIFFERENT tool for each content.

Or you think that file manager must replace device drivers too (because devices are files)?

As you say everything is a file, but each file CONTENT is different and you use a DIFFERENT tool for each content.

I'm with you, but I see the tools workig in the environment of the "file manager". Just like the traditional UNIX tools work in the environment of stin,stdout,stderr and command line.

Or you think that file manager must replace device drivers too (because devices are files)?

Well thats just the problem, isnt it? The file metaphor really is a lowlevel metaphor. Why export it to the user interface at all? Isn't there a higher level metaphor more suited to that task?

Edited 2006-05-14 13:36

Now this is something I too want to know.