I’ll be leaving for vacation soon and will miss the fun of selecting a
splash for GIMP 2.2. Everyone who has submitted
a splash, please resend the entries to the list. Everyone else, feel free
to use the
template and send in your
splashes!

Update from Sven Neumann: Please do not send submissions
to the mailing-list. I don’t know what Dave was thinking when he announced
this, but the mailing-list doesn’t accept attachments and it’s
subscribers-only. We are preparing a different way for you to submit your
entries. Please check www.gimp.org for
updates.

Sorry to skip a few, I hope you didn’t do anything unlawful in the meantime,
pixeljunkies.

Created a few G*meboy icons.
Hopefully I won’t be getting a C&D
letter for mentioning the name, Nentindo.

Right then I figured I should be more careful not to abuse the HIG in *every* aspect and redone the MIME types.

A small mockup based on my previous
idea. We used to have a warning like that in nautilus, but this one isn’t
just informing you about a possible problem, but giving you a tool to get what
you want.

Creating a special type of view that I mentioned last time does sound like a
headache, since we don’t really do that anywhere on the desktop and like Steve
mentioned in the comments it may cause confusion to show a different view
depending on the contents of a folder. On the other hand obtrusive dialogs are not very nice either. So maybe this whole idea isn’t so good afterall.

Talking about IM buddies
and the file
dialog sluggishnes recently let my poor excuse for a brain come up with an
idea. When opening a folder with many items, say over 300, nautilus and the
file dialog could show a little query widget instead of listing all the files
while giving an option (button) to browse the files if you insist.

This is based on my experience:

• When I enter a folder with a lot of items I have some idea of what I’m
  looking for when loading a file. Searching for a substring is how I found stuff
  in the old file selector. Select as you type in the new one may or may not
  work as good. It is pretty much impossible to find a file just by scrolling
  and scanning content.
• When saving I’m rarely interested in the contents of the destination folder. I just want to navigate there and provide the filename. Sometimes I do want to know a filename in that folder, but again I know a substring at least from the item I’m interested in.
• With applications such as the GIMP, the last used folder is stored. If
  you saved your current document to a folder with a lot of files, and want to
  save or open a file, the file dialog opens up in the same location slowing you
  again before you can browse to a different location.

I will try to mock up something or maybe even realise that 1AM ideas don’t
sound so cool in the morning.

Update: This is of course not only bound to the performace. Of
course making both nautilus and the file dialog handle huge item amounts
snappily is a good goal. But once you have it shown quickly, you’ll still
struggle to find the item you’re looking for…

Fernando,
I’m definitely not convinced the solution to all the use cases you’ve shown
is an IM buddy list and don’t see anything about having a central contact
database with IM info being targeted at hackers. All the tasks you mentioned
are about finding a person. Are you saying that scanning through a huge buddy
list is comfortable?

In real life when you’re looking for a person, you use an addressbook.
That’s what the gnome desktop needs. A separate addressbook application for
you to manage your contacts. As currently implemented in the EVo integrated
contacts component, it would contain IM info as well. So when your nympho
Alice wants to scan though her contacts, she can do that in the addressbook
as well as she would in the buddy list. However if she’s actually looking for
someone particular she would have better ways than scanning.

You have to realise people have a *LOT* of contacts (A nerdy disocial home
creature like myself has about 50 personal contacts and that number will be a
lot higher for “normal” people). Especially in the corporate environment
with central contact repositories of employee colleagues and individual
business contacts. I’m convinced the buddy list for instant messaging is
redundant.

As for IRC-like group chat with no real concept of identity, that you’re
possibly targeting with your nick changes use case, I don’t know. Not being
able to reliably relate data to a person sounds like a nightmare. I don’t see
buddy list providing any solution though. I have to check how the IRC plugin
in gaim really works but I’d be surprised it would deal with people changing
hosts and nicks.

I haven’t been feeling all too well lately. I really need a break.

Today I installed one of my favourite classics, Dungeon Keeper, with DOSBOX. The game works fine alas a little slow
(on a p4/3GHz . It’s amazing I could have installed and run the game though.
Way to go Dosbox developers.

DOSBOX is great in that it doesn’t require a lot of tweaking. None most of
the time. It behaves just like I’d expect it to. Emulates variety of
soundcards, does protected mode now (and a CD-ROM mount emulation which this
game requires) and is simply an amazing project. Thanks guys.

I’m glad Jeff
shares my idea of not
needing a buddy list for IM.

I find myself searching for a buddy in my gaim window all the time. It may
work for 4-5 contacts. It makes sense to have a list like that for a history
of contacts you have talked to, but not for a complete list of your
contacts.

For some reason the file dialog is really
slow when listing directories with lots of files. I wonder if something
changed or I never noticed.

• This is a dual p3/700 system with Ubuntu with gtk 2.4.10 and gnome 2.8
• Xvidcap doesn’t record cursors, so you don’t see the wait cursor
• The neat politically correct wallpaper was made by my friend
  xycht
• Yes, it takes about 10 seconds to load a directory of cca 800 items

Today I decided to change my ISP again. It’s one of my hobbies.