Bug 387455

*** Bug 393634 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Now that the port to Q4/Q5 is over and Dolphin is quite stable (for me at least in Debian Testing), maybe we can consider adding back this much requested feature? This feature was removed originally due to low usage but high complexity which complicated maintenance. Maybe maintenance is a smaller burden now that the ports are over and we have successfully replaced Konqueror for file management?

*** Bug 290747 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

*** Bug 434665 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 141354 [details]
Screenshot of DOlphin's Show in Groups option

As of Dolphin 21.08.1, setting View Mode to Compact and enabling the "Show in Groups" option divides the content of the folder into columns. (See attached screenshot)
Maybe this could be a starting point for a miller-columns-style navigation system?
I have not looked into the source code, I'm just throwing an idea :)

What is the status on this? I am coming back to Linux after many many years and I still see this very popular feature request pending. Is there any hope? I feel like KDE has lost its momentum and the its development roadmap is not as sharply defined as it used to be.

Well as usual the problem is that no one willing and able to do it has stepped up to the plate, and as mentioned before it's not exactly trivial to do, as per Nate from several years ago in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290747#c45:

> For everybody who wants this feature back: we understand, and in fact agree with you! Column view is sorely missed. The problem is technical, not ideological. This part of Dolphin was rewritten 5 years ago in such a manner that made Column view unmaintainable/unimplementable. That's not an insurmountable barrier to overcome, but overcome it does need to be if we are to get a new column view. Patches are always welcome!

If you really want someone to get to this feature and are willing to chip in monetarily for it then there is the sponsored work section in the KDE forums: https://discuss.kde.org/c/development/sponsored-work/31

That said, I do wonder if the technical situation has changed at all these days, since that comment was from 2017.

Méven Car (https://invent.kde.org/meven) said in the KDE Matrix chat that he'd like to get sponsored to implement Miller columns in Dolphin once he has enough time.

To make some progress, it would be good to have an estimate of how much time the implementation would take and what sum would need to be sponsored.

(In reply to Alexander Wilms from comment #9)
> Méven Car (https://invent.kde.org/meven) said in the KDE Matrix chat that
> he'd like to get sponsored to implement Miller columns in Dolphin once he
> has enough time.
> 
> To make some progress, it would be good to have an estimate of how much time
> the implementation would take and what sum would need to be sponsored.

I would estimate this to 2-3 weeks for developing  pretty much full time. I tend to be too optimistic when evaluating needed work time, I tried to be conservative. The amount of revenue to pay for compensating this work is pretty expensive given my usual work hourly rate, would be around 1500€ to 2250€, but a bounty starts to be incentivizing earlier when it is not your day job, others might be capable of making it and cheaper.

I might end up doing it without sponsoring when I have no major endeavors underway/pending, because I know users will enjoy this feature and I will too. That's one of those I have in my never ending in-mind todo-list.
Btw I am the co-maintainer of dolphin, in case you didn't know.

(In reply to Méven Car from comment #10)
> (In reply to Alexander Wilms from comment #9)
> > To make some progress, it would be good to have an estimate of how much time
> > the implementation would take and what sum would need to be sponsored.
> 
> I would estimate this to 2-3 weeks for developing  pretty much full time. I
> tend to be too optimistic when evaluating needed work time

I think that's way too optimistic. 😅 That's potentially how long it might take to have workable basic functionality that's mergable, but factor in all the edge cases, the ongoing maintenance work of an extra and uniquely-behaving view mode, all the polishing, fixes for features that interact with the view and now need to be adapted, time of reviewers, etc., and I would say you could easily *multiply* the 2-3 weeks by 3 to 8.

Of course KDE contributors have started and continually worked on even bigger long-term tasks in the past, but IMO realistically people who work on this will be grossly underpaid by normal economic standpoints unless we find exceptional funding streams. "1500€ to 2250€" would potentially be the value of the work I would be doing simply by co-maintaining, dealing with bug reports, reviewing fixes, and dealing with crashes or other potential fallout even if Mèven would be doing all of the work of actually implementing the main functionality.

And let's not forget that those amounts do not include all the work KDE contributors have done until now to get comfortable with the code base.

>The amount of revenue to pay for compensating this work is
>pretty expensive given my usual work hourly rate,
>would be around 1500€ to 2250€

I just want to point out how very generous it is by Mèven to state that amount. Even by his own estimates that is for example far below the minimum wage in Switzerland.

2250€ / 3 weeks = 2250€ / 120 work hours = 18.75 €/h

Mèven is very capable, so that's again a value I would multiply by normal economic view points. Of course, many KDE contributors do a lot of work as volunteers for free, so normal economic considerations are generally not a topic in KDE.

>it would be good to have an estimate of how much time
> the implementation would take and what sum would need to be sponsored.

By my estimate, funding as high as 50 000€ would not be outlandish. But the real answer is "as much money until a contributor is so generous to give their work to the world at a discount".