GWorkspace Suggestions

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

I'm just working working with latest CVS version of Workplace.app :-)... Thanks 
Enrico, you have done a great job.

What do you think about following two ideas:

There are two main viewers: Icon Viewer and Browser Viewer. They provide 
different look on file system and different way of navigating it. Sometimes I 
would like to see, for example, file size under the icon, or creation date 
there ... or, as it was in lates GW discussion, I would like to see thumbnail 
of document, or real song and author name in a MP3 file. All this can make 
navigation of filesystem much more faster and there are occasions where you 
will find what you are looking for quickier. Sure, I can use Inspector to see 
all those things ... but I have to select particular file to be able to see it.

First idea is to have Viewer Cell bundles. Viewer Cell Bundle can provide a 
class that will be able to display cells for particular Viewer. Like 
IconBrowserCell will display icons in Browser Viewer, PlainBrowserCell will 
not. ThumbnailIconCell will display thumbnailed icons, FileInfoIconCel will 
display file size and modification date along with file name, etc... I can pick 
a way to browse and a way to represent files in the browser. (Cells can be 
paired Browser/Icon with same or similar look).

Second idea is to have Content View Bundles. Like we have Content Inspectors, 
Content View Bundle provides only a class for displaying/previewing file 
contents in some useful way for browsing the filesystem. Those bundles can 
provide thumbnails for images or can provide PDF information from file 
displayed in a paper-sheet-icon instead of file icon,... Those Content View 
Bundles can be provided directly by applications. Bundles can be bundled 
together with apps that can deal with particular file, and a tool such as 
make_services can gather and cache information about all available bundles.

Btw. this mechanism of application bundles can be also used for Content Views. 
(Similar way as services are advertised)

It was just in brief.

What do you think?

Stefan Urbanek
--
http://urbanek.host.sk

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi