Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

Murray, I have 2 big issues with the GUADEC registration:

• Nobody said GUADEC Registration would require paying this year. Now that everyone has booked, this really looks like a scam. And there is no register-and-pay-when-you-check-in option, which is not nice at all, see below

• You require PayPal. That forbid people from some countries, like say Iran, to register for the GUADEC. And since you have to give your mailing info to PayPal, even if it does not require an account, you just ask everyone to be spammed

Note: I'm not arguing the fact that you need to pay EUR 30 + VAT, just how things are done.

Despite being undocumented by the camera manufacturers, there are several Free Software tools to manipulate RAW files on Linux.

I was looking on how to provide thumbnails to RAW files in Nautilus.

I found 3 methods:

• Using the method described in that Mini-HOWTO for RAW files
• Use Novell package which does do the what as been described above, but providing a nice RPM of SuSE.
• Use gnome-raw-thumbnailer which I'm trying to make work as a package on Ubuntu.

The first two method just wrap dcraw in a shell script, which is quite heavy.

The latest just take dcraw code to convert to thumbnails. It does the right thing as it extract the thumbnails from the RAW file and let GdkPixbuf convert it to the thumbnail in PNG.

I wonder why Nautilus doesn't do that for JPEG files too as most digital cameras comes with a thumbnail inside the EXIF information; falling back to the actual method if needed.

I don't like Ubuntu Nautilus Spatial mode, then one that makes close the window when you open a subfolder. It is anti-ergonomic, because there are a lot of case when you still want the upper folder (just to open another one). I hate even more the fact that I got that option silently when upgrading the package but not only the first time I run Nautilus. I think that if the option was not there, then it shoudln't be enabled, and if the option is not there, unless you are initializing the whold Nautilus gconf tree. That is the route I'd have taken. Thanks to Gconf, I disabled it, because they forgot to put a UI together for that... that reminds me another GNOME feature where the UI has been forgotten and the expense of user's pain.

For those who don't know, the Nautilus Spatial Mode is that opening a folder opens a new window. This is how the Finder on MacOS was designed back in 1984. On MacOS, pressing the option key (also labelled Alt) close the previous window while opening a new one. In Nautilus, this is with Shift, but the idea is the same.

Ubuntu decided to put that option to close the previous window automatically by default, reverting the effect of the Shift key. There is even a bug 8516 about that, because it is not popular.

I think that what should be written in Nautilus is a "browser" view. By "browser" I mean what Nextstep now MacOS X call browser. Hierchical browsing with adjacent columns... This coupled with a spatial mode and you have a powerful file management. Perhaps should I file a bug if it doesn't exist yet... (or do it, but that is another story)