6 ms·

Dolphin is the best. I love how it integrates a terminal that follows you through folders. Best of both worlds: GUI and CLI together

sph 4y ago
Why not add an email client panel as well? Windowing should be a window manager concern. There is no reason for Dolphin to embed a terminal instead of your window manager to just keep a borderless Konsole next to it, like you might see on any tiled WM. It's pure bloat caused by inflexible software. Personally I would love to see tabs, panes and all that crap disappear from any application. It shouldn't be their concerns to manage windows. My dream desktop would even have Emacs windows be separate frames managed by the window manager, not by Emacs itself.
- massysett 4y ago
  ? Aren’t Emacs frames (the C-x 5 2 variety) managed by the window manager already?
  - sph 4y ago
    Yes, but Emacs tends to use windows (what one would call panes elsewhere) for everything, not frames, so it replicates badly something your desktop is already doing.
- wasmitnetzen 4y ago
  GP gave a reason: The terminal follows you around while you navigate in the file browser. I don't even know to think about where I would start to implement something like that in a tiling window manager. I'm pretty sure it would be a pretty ugly hack.
  - sph 4y ago
    The fact that it's not done before doesn't mean that it should be rocket science to have two windows conjoined on one side.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      Attaching the windows to each other has been done. Synchronizing their working directories, to my knowledge, has not.
    - veidr 4y ago
      The point is not the window-conjoining, it is synchronizing the app-specific state of the file browser with the state of the CLI in the terminal, and keeping that up to date as the user navigates around. That seems pretty specific and outside the purview of what a window manager should be doing itself.
      - rtontic 4y ago
        Hm, it would be cool though, if we could achieve some sort of piping system for graphical applications.
        veidr 4y ago
        100% agree, but I think the actual number of use cases are not that many, the implementation complexity is high, and on top of that you then need buy-in from all the apps. Would be really cool, though. A potentially easier idea I have ruminated on is just letting apps (or better, having the OS almost force them to) expose a "current app environment state" that any other (authorized) app could read and subscribe to (in some waves hands efficient way). Even in this example, though, you already have security concerns: do I want other apps to be able to know that my file browser is perusing the "pr0n" directory? If no, then how do we put the user in charge of that kind of thing in a way that is simple enough not to make the entire idea more trouble than it's worth?
- jraph 4y ago
  would it be the WM's role to synchronize the terminal and the FM ? Purity is not everything. Usability is. KDE is architectured such that components can be embedded everywhere (kparts), it's one of its strength and it's also sound. Its own kind or purity. Also Qt is really good at tabs and pane, I'm happy my WM doesn't concern itself with the content of my windows.
  - sph 4y ago
    The goal of being able to embed apps everywhere reminds me of COM/OLE and ActiveX. No, thanks. Again, and this time less sarcastically, if embedding is the goal, why can't I embed an email client and only the terminal is an approved extension? Seems awfully limiting.
    - rolenthedeep 4y ago
      Sure, I'll bite. Embedding a terminal in a file manager solves a particular problem. It synchronizes the working directory of the terminal with the directory open in the file explorer. This is a pretty common problem to have, and there certainly are other solutions to it, but embedding a terminal within the explorer is a good solution for a lot of use cases. It's convenient, and it makes sense for a program that manages your files to enable you to more directly manage files with a terminal prompt. It doesn't really make sense for a file manager to embed an email client because email doesn't usually involve file management. Needing to send an email from a particular directory isn't a problem that anybody has. Could you synchronize a terminal window and a file explorer window? I'm sure you could with a bit of effort. You could also set up a whole tile manager and dock those two windows together. For people who don't want to do all that, or don't use or don't like tiling, or who just want to run chmod +x on the file they downloaded, putting a terminal in the file manager is a perfectly valid solution to a relatively minor inconvenience. It even has a hotkey to close it when you don't want your window spoiled by a horrible subframe.
      - allisdust 4y ago
        This is a common enough problem that Windows power toys used to have a way to open terminal from explorer right click menu. Very useful functionality.

sph 4y ago

Why not add an email client panel as well? Windowing should be a window manager concern. There is no reason for Dolphin to embed a terminal instead of your window manager to just keep a borderless Konsole next to it, like you might see on any tiled WM. It's pure bloat caused by inflexible software. Personally I would love to see tabs, panes and all that crap disappear from any application. It shouldn't be their concerns to manage windows. My dream desktop would even have Emacs windows be separate frames managed by the window manager, not by Emacs itself.

massysett 4y ago
? Aren’t Emacs frames (the C-x 5 2 variety) managed by the window manager already?
- sph 4y ago
  Yes, but Emacs tends to use windows (what one would call panes elsewhere) for everything, not frames, so it replicates badly something your desktop is already doing.
wasmitnetzen 4y ago
GP gave a reason: The terminal follows you around while you navigate in the file browser. I don't even know to think about where I would start to implement something like that in a tiling window manager. I'm pretty sure it would be a pretty ugly hack.
- sph 4y ago
  The fact that it's not done before doesn't mean that it should be rocket science to have two windows conjoined on one side.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Attaching the windows to each other has been done. Synchronizing their working directories, to my knowledge, has not.
  - veidr 4y ago
    The point is not the window-conjoining, it is synchronizing the app-specific state of the file browser with the state of the CLI in the terminal, and keeping that up to date as the user navigates around. That seems pretty specific and outside the purview of what a window manager should be doing itself.
    - rtontic 4y ago
      Hm, it would be cool though, if we could achieve some sort of piping system for graphical applications.
      - veidr 4y ago
        100% agree, but I think the actual number of use cases are not that many, the implementation complexity is high, and on top of that you then need buy-in from all the apps. Would be really cool, though. A potentially easier idea I have ruminated on is just letting apps (or better, having the OS almost force them to) expose a "current app environment state" that any other (authorized) app could read and subscribe to (in some waves hands efficient way). Even in this example, though, you already have security concerns: do I want other apps to be able to know that my file browser is perusing the "pr0n" directory? If no, then how do we put the user in charge of that kind of thing in a way that is simple enough not to make the entire idea more trouble than it's worth?
jraph 4y ago
would it be the WM's role to synchronize the terminal and the FM ? Purity is not everything. Usability is. KDE is architectured such that components can be embedded everywhere (kparts), it's one of its strength and it's also sound. Its own kind or purity. Also Qt is really good at tabs and pane, I'm happy my WM doesn't concern itself with the content of my windows.
- sph 4y ago
  The goal of being able to embed apps everywhere reminds me of COM/OLE and ActiveX. No, thanks. Again, and this time less sarcastically, if embedding is the goal, why can't I embed an email client and only the terminal is an approved extension? Seems awfully limiting.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    Sure, I'll bite. Embedding a terminal in a file manager solves a particular problem. It synchronizes the working directory of the terminal with the directory open in the file explorer. This is a pretty common problem to have, and there certainly are other solutions to it, but embedding a terminal within the explorer is a good solution for a lot of use cases. It's convenient, and it makes sense for a program that manages your files to enable you to more directly manage files with a terminal prompt. It doesn't really make sense for a file manager to embed an email client because email doesn't usually involve file management. Needing to send an email from a particular directory isn't a problem that anybody has. Could you synchronize a terminal window and a file explorer window? I'm sure you could with a bit of effort. You could also set up a whole tile manager and dock those two windows together. For people who don't want to do all that, or don't use or don't like tiling, or who just want to run chmod +x on the file they downloaded, putting a terminal in the file manager is a perfectly valid solution to a relatively minor inconvenience. It even has a hotkey to close it when you don't want your window spoiled by a horrible subframe.
    - allisdust 4y ago
      This is a common enough problem that Windows power toys used to have a way to open terminal from explorer right click menu. Very useful functionality.