Special:Badtitle/NS90:User talk:Shortstheory/GSoC 2016 Project Idea: File Trays for file selections in Dolphin

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The Idea

Introduction

Selecting multiple files in any file manager for copying and pasting has never been a pleasant experience, especially if the files are in a non-continuous order. Often, when copying files between devices we might find that we need to select only a subset of the required files we have selected and this leads to the unwieldy operation of removing files from our selection. Of course, the common workaround is to create a new folder and to put all the items in but this is a very inefficient process and can be very slow if large files need to be copied between devices.

My solution to this problem is to add a panel/view in Dolphin where the links to files and folders can be temporarily saved for a session. The files and folders are "staged" on this panel. Hence, the user can add folders and files from several different directories to this panel and can then collectively perform actions on all the items in the tray such as copy, paste, cut, delete items, send via Bluetooth, and to create a list of symbolic links. As part of the project, better sharing options for the File Tray and Dolphin as a whole using the KDE Purpose Framework API are planned to be implemented.

Files can be added to this tray by using a right-click context menu option or by using the mouse scroll click or drag and drop. As an additional option, the session for the File Tray Panel can be saved for later use. Hence, complex file operations such as moving files across many devices can be made easy by staging the operation before performing it.

This File Tray will be accessible through the existing Split view function in Dolphin as well as a directory available under the Panel section. This would make it neatly integrated with Dolphin's existing toolset and it would make dragging and dropping easy.

Use Cases

• Jerry has a large music collection on his computer and he has many devices such as a tablet, smartphone, HTPC, and a USB drive for his car audio. He needs only a subset of files from his extensive collection which he wants to keep on all his devices. Hence, to avoid making the same selection over and over again for each device, it's much more efficient for him to just create his list on the File Tray and then copy the same list to each device.

• George is a student at university and he has a lot of unorganised files on his computer from lots of different directories. By selecting these files and staging them on the File Tray in a split view mode, he can easily discern where each file should go. He can then easily move files by simply dragging and dropping them in the directory they belong in. This makes the File Tray a helpful tool for file organisation.

• Cosmo keeps forgetting where he keeps his important files as they are often hidden deep within directories and sub-directories. The File Trays feature can come to the rescue here by letting him stash the files in the File Tray and hence it will save him time from drilling deep into directories for a file. Hence, the File Tray can also be used for making quick shortcuts for files. For this I plan to add a feature and user preference to allow the user to restore the Tray from the previous session and to have the option of making the Tray retain the files stored in it across sessions.