Opened 15 years ago
Last modified 4 years ago
#5343 assigned enhancement
Compressed folders
| Reported by: | fano | Owned by: | nobody |
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| Priority: | normal | Milestone: | Unscheduled |
| Component: | Applications/Tracker | Version: | R1/alpha1 |
| Keywords: | Cc: | ||
| Blocked By: | Blocking: | ||
| Platform: | All |
Description
As implemented from Windows XP (and OSX has this too now, I think) a zipped archive must be shown as a "Compressed folder" in Tracker (and for all application) the user can copy file to it (and file is added in the archive and compressed), move a file in it (that is the file is moved and compressed), all file operation should be supported "transparently".
As you can create a New Folder you'll create a New Compress Folder (that is a archive in reality!).
The supported format may not limited to zip, but rar, 7zip, tar.gz should be supported.
Change History (8)
comment:1 by , 15 years ago
comment:2 by , 15 years ago
Well I've used the M$ term to simplify... indeed you're right their (not) implementation is pretty confused, it gives the idea of not finished work. Explorer see (and the user, too) a zipped archive as a "folder" but application not... usefulness...
However the idea was good the implementation questionable... I intended to expand the behavior in a more consistent way that is:
- Traker show tge archive as a "Compressed Folder" in all equals as a folder only the icon change to indicata that is compressed
- User can copy a file in it (and it is compressed on-the file), delete a file (cancel from the archive), move and so on...
- Styledit opens a text file on the "Compressed Folder" or SAVEs a file in it
- Mediaplayer read a video/audio file from the "Compressed Folder"
- "Power User" that use the terminal does cd "Compressed Folder" and launch "gvim filename"... gvim opens as expected...
The gnome approach is to mount the archive on /home/user/.gv I think... and I suppose (I've to try it) only on user request...
I don't know if the operations listed by me are possible without extract the archive; the gnome approach to mount is uncompressing in reality in the .gv location or is a mount of a sort of zip-filesystem?
If FUSE implements a sort of zip-filesystem is interesting but I don't like the idea of the mount in "random location", if it was possible to FUSE ( :-) )the 2 ideas mount a "zip fs" in place of the archive file (that is hide it!) so Traker an the rest of the os says the "Compressed Folder".
comment:3 by , 10 years ago
We could mount zip or other file formats just like we do for ISO images: double click it, get a new icon on the desktop. Mounting the archive "in-place" has some advantages too, but can also be a bit more confusing.
We could use something similar to the Amiga XPK to manage archives. There is an UNIX port of it: http://vesuri.jormas.com/xpk/ but it probably need a better and BeAPI interface, and support for more usual formats. The design and philosohy of XPK, however, is interesting. I don't know if there are similar solutions on Linux these days (libarchive maybe?)
Also we must take care of xattrs preservation, which most common UNIX tool won't handle. We have support in zip files for example, but only in the info-zip tools.
comment:4 by , 10 years ago
| Milestone: | R1 → Unscheduled |
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comment:5 by , 8 years ago
| Owner: | changed from to |
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| Status: | new → assigned |
comment:6 by , 4 years ago
Personally, I prefer the "old school" behavior of an archive file opening with Expander or another archive utility. I have always found the Windows-style behavior annoying, and non-technical users are constantly confused by it. Just the other day, I had to field a support call where a user was trying to install software (on Windows) that was inside a zip file, but he was getting stuck because he just double-clicked the zip file instead of actually extracting the files.
It might be neat if you could drag a file on top of an existing archive and be prompted to add the file to the archive. But my vote is for keeping it as simple as possible.
comment:7 by , 4 years ago
Well, windows gets this wrong, they make it appear as if the archive was a regular filesystem, but in fact it isn't, and only the file you open is extracted to a temporary directory, changes made to it do not get stored to the archive but the file isn't marked as readonly, etc. Indeed if you wanted to confuse users, that would be a great way to achieve it.
If we were to do this, it would be as an actual filesystem, so that it would actually work as expected, making zip files a kind of compresed folders.
I never quite liked this solution, as it limits access to the files to the file manager. File panels and applications can't access them, which can be quite confusing.
Better would be a Gnome VFS like approach that seems to mount things like this under a well known location (obviously using FUSE).