Re: GWorkspace.app Feature Request-- Tabbed Shelf

[Enrico Sersale]

On 2003-06-27 00:55:49 +0300 Nicolas Roard <nicolas@roard.com> wrote:

> On 2003-06-26 21:43:56 +0000 Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
> > > Fred seems to work on it, and personally I think it's better to put it in 
> > > NSWorkspace,
> > > so every application will benefit. The code itself shouldn't be 
> > > computer-intensive,
> > > so I don't think it will hurt the performance (but, a cache for icons could be 
> > > good
> > > in GWorkspace ?)
> >
> > I was only toying around with this a bit, as it did look a lot more interesting 
> > than getting the rest of the GCC 3.3 warnings out of GUI.
>
> ok :-))
>
> > If Enrico already has an implementation this surely is better than what I have 
> > got.
> >
> > The "thumbnailer" application confuses me a bit. Who would be starting this? I 
> > could see GWorkspace doing this but it is hard to see NSWorksapce in that role.

It is not an application, it is a service. So, if it is not running, it will start when 
you choose "Make thumbnail(s)" from the Services menu.

It simply creates an image from a file:
-initWithContentsOfFile:
gets an NSImageRep from it:
-bestRepresentationForDevice:
gets the bitmap data:
-getBitmapDataPlanes:
resample this data with an algorithm taken from ToyViewer and simplified.
creates a new NSBitmapImageRep from the resampled data:
-initWithBitmapDataPlanes: etc. etc. etc.
write the thumbnail:
[[rep TIFFRepresentation] writeToFile: outpath atomically: YES];

Now we have only to decide *where* the thumbnails must be saved, their size, 
etc. and who must make icons from them, NSWorkspace or GW.

Obviously, the same code can be adapded for a tool that, launched by 
GWorkspace, automatically creates thumbnails in the current directory.

> hm well... in my idea, NSWorkspace's role would be only to check if a thumbnail
> exists when requested by iconForFile ; if there is a thumbnail, then it reads 
> it and
> returns it instead of the default icon. If no thumbnail, it returns the default 
> icon.
> It shouldn't be the NSWorkspace's role to *create* the thumbnail, I think it's 
> way
> out the its role. So we need a way to create them, and a service could fit, it 
> could
> also be an automatic action in GWorkspace, or a dedicated menu item in 
> GWorkspace
> (as this service to create thumbnails of the selected files or the current 
> directory seems *very* related to GWorkspace, I don't see much other 
> applications using it) ...