Bug 168592 - Re-Add multiple split + horizontal split features
Summary: Re-Add multiple split + horizontal split features
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: dolphin
Classification: Applications
Component: split view (show other bugs)
Version: 17.12.3
Platform: Ubuntu Linux
: HI wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dolphin Bug Assignee
URL:
Keywords:
: 147649 276954 319656 389823 403679 412316 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2008-08-07 12:48 UTC by A. Mosteo
Modified: 2023-08-15 20:33 UTC (History)
17 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description A. Mosteo 2008-08-07 12:48:55 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.1.0)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages
OS:                Linux

I'm using a monitor rotated into portrait mode. Splitting the view in dolphin is not very practical in this configuration, since I get two narrow columns. An option to make the splitter horizontal would be nice.

(More generally, I guess every view could be split vertically/horizontally ad infinitum while screen space permits. Should I file this as a different wish?)
Comment 1 Peter Penz 2008-08-07 13:35:45 UTC
> More generally, I guess every view could be split
> vertically/horizontally ad infinitum while screen
> space permits. Should I file this as a different wish?)

A separate wish would be correct, but honestly speaking we have currently no plans to provide infinite splitting in Dolphin as this is why we have Konqueror.
Comment 2 Manolete 2008-10-07 00:56:05 UTC
I totally agree with this whish.
I use a panoramic LCD screen on a 17 inches laptop. It has a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution so I like to haven Dolphin occupying just half of my screen and use the other half for other applications. Well, I do believe it would be a good idea to have horizontal split view in Dolphin since vertical split is almost unuseful for me (and I'm sure for much more people, of course), I just can't read most of the file and folder names unless I maximize dolphin or hide imformation colums (size, date, etc). Besides, the remaining partition space bar dissapears.

I don't know if not having infinite splits is a good idea or not (yes, we have Konqueror, but wasn't replacing Konq with Dolphin for file management the reason for making Dolph and "castrate" Konqueror?), but I don't think having two splitting options, the vertical one, already present, and a new horizontal split view would make Dolphin much heavier, no?

Regards.
Comment 3 FiNeX 2008-11-06 23:19:19 UTC
*** Bug 147649 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Diggory Hardy 2011-01-21 16:45:48 UTC
I agree, but suggest that instead of separate config or buttons the "split view" button just splits in whichever orientation makes the most sense given the dimensions of the window. In many cases the correct choice is pretty obvious, particularly since most screens are wide-aspect-ratio these days.
Comment 5 Janet 2011-01-24 11:41:06 UTC
@Comment #4: No please, no automation, that would be absolutely horrible. I want to decide how my workplace looks like and don't want any program to "think" for me what might be best for me, that's in most cases the wrong decision. It depends on the situation when I want to have a horizonal or vertical split window, independent from the size of the window and the screen.
Comment 6 Kai Uwe Broulik 2011-01-24 12:21:00 UTC
Maybe add an additional Split Horizontally button or better - since it clutters the UI less - add the horizontal splitting as subentry of the button. I don‘t know how it is called but in KMail for example the Fetch E-Mail button fetches all when you click it and when you click and hold a menu appears that lets you decide which account in particular you want to fetch e-mails now
Comment 7 Todd 2011-01-24 15:44:46 UTC
I think the latter approach, have it to horizontal by default but let you press and hold to pull up a menu, is the best option.  It is called a "Delayed Popup".

Actually, there is no reason you can't have both the popup and individual buttons.  If you change the View->Split main menu action to a view->split->Split Horizontal and split vertical sub-menus using and action menu, you will automatically get a toolbar button for the split sub-menu and toolbar buttons for split horizontal and split vertical for free.  

So I think having it as a view sub-menu and delayed popup toolbar button by default, but having the split vertical and split horizontal buttons are available as alternatives, would be the best approach.
Comment 8 Peter Penz 2011-07-02 14:59:55 UTC
*** Bug 276954 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) 2012-08-24 16:21:27 UTC
Resetting assignee to default as per bug #305719
Comment 10 Frank Reininghaus 2013-05-11 16:06:43 UTC
*** Bug 319656 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 exsudat 2013-05-12 11:04:46 UTC
It is my wish to, to have automated own-thinking split-view feauter.
The automate-thinking could be deactivated per setting of course.

The splitting shouldn't depend on the screen size!
It have to depend on the relation beween the x-size and y-size of the window.

And what is it about the Konquerer-Argument? Konq is a resource hungry browser. What is its relation to Dolphin and the split view thing?

What is about the state of this report? It is quite old and nothing happen!

Implement it or close it.
Comment 12 Diggory Hardy 2013-05-12 11:53:47 UTC
Yes, it's quite old. Who's developing or maintaining Dolphin? Is this waiting for a decision or a patch?
Comment 13 Frank Reininghaus 2013-05-12 21:15:13 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> And what is it about the Konquerer-Argument? Konq is a resource hungry
> browser. What is its relation to Dolphin and the split view thing?

Konqueror can equally be used as a file manger. It uses the same view engine as Dolphin, and provides more advanced view splitting options.

> What is about the state of this report? It is quite old and nothing happen!

(In reply to comment #12)
> Yes, it's quite old. Who's developing or maintaining Dolphin? Is this
> waiting for a decision or a patch?

I maintain Dolphin since last July. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to work on it - I can barely read all incoming bug reports and comments and work on a small subset of them. I cannot work on major new features. In particular, just because a report is 'old' does not mean that it gets implemented automatically. In the end, somebody must spend a considerable amount of time implementing it, and in a small team of people who only have a bit of free time to work on Dolphin, this is quite hard if you consider how many bug and wish reports are filed all the time.

For this particular case however, I'm not even sure if implementing this wish is really desirable. Yes, I know that some people would like to see it, but Dolphin does not really aim to fulfil all feature requests of every user (see http://dolphin.kde.org/philosophy.html). Adding complexity (both GUI-wise and code-wise) for a feature that only a small subset of the user base benefits from is not our goal, in particular, if Konqueror offers that feature already.

BTW, automatically deciding how to split the view is a no-go from my point of view. Guessing what the user wants and taking a particular action based on such guesses is not a good idea IMHO - we would often do exactly what the user does currently not want and annoy him/her badly.
Comment 14 Diggory Hardy 2013-05-13 10:31:50 UTC
Thanks for the reply Frank. Yes, I assumed a patch would get further than a simple request, but also that the decision might be not to include this anyway, hence my question.

If people feel that strongly about automated decisions, then that option is out, which, as far as I understand it, leaves:
1) no changes
2) an additional button to split the other way (since toolbars are already configurable, there's no need of another option for this)

So, decision?

Given that, I *might* find time to implement this, but I'm sure someone else could too.
Comment 15 exsudat 2013-05-13 11:12:35 UTC
The automatism can be set by option. The option could be off by default if it is more the KDE-way.

But the automatism is quite my own decision way. If y-size is larger then x-size I want a horizontal split. It is simple.

When Konq is a file manager, too (I never used it!) why does Dolphin exisits? What is the phiolosphy behind it?

And I don't understand the existens of Konq either. KDE should use firefox. It would save a lot of resources. ;)

btw: I will check out Konq on my netbook.
Comment 16 Frank Reininghaus 2013-05-13 11:33:12 UTC
(In reply to comment #14)
> If people feel that strongly about automated decisions, then that option is
> out, which, as far as I understand it, leaves:
> 1) no changes
> 2) an additional button to split the other way (since toolbars are already
> configurable, there's no need of another option for this)
> 
> So, decision?

My decision is "no changes", sorry. I believe that the need for a new way to split Dolphin's views is not big enough to justify adding that amount of complexity to the code. It's not as simple as changing the orientation of the QSplitter - lots of little changes are needed in other areas as well.

But maybe some other future maintainer will have another opinion, so let's keep the report open.

(In reply to comment #15)
> When Konq is a file manager, too (I never used it!) why does Dolphin
> exisits? What is the phiolosphy behind it?

I love it when I take some time to write a detailed reply (note that I actually linked to the "Dolphin philosophy" page) and then people don't even bother to read it before they ask their next questions.

> And I don't understand the existens of Konq either. KDE should use firefox.
> It would save a lot of resources. ;)

Please stop wasting everyone's time and filling Dolphin bug/wish reports with off-topic nonsense. Thanks for your understanding. I will not reply to any futher comments here.
Comment 17 Diggory Hardy 2013-05-13 11:38:15 UTC
No, I suggest you close as "WONTFIX", otherwise it looks like this issue is waiting for someone's attention.
Comment 18 Frank Reininghaus 2013-05-13 11:51:53 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> No, I suggest you close as "WONTFIX", otherwise it looks like this issue is
> waiting for someone's attention.

OK. This is really my last coment in this report:

Please note that we have more than 500 wish reports. Most of them will obviously never get implemented. It seems that you suggest that I close all of them as WONTFIX. But doing that and writing a short explanation for every report (if I don't do that, people will probably get upset and just reopen the report) would take far more time than I can spend in a whole year on Dolphin. And it would lead to many unpleasant discussions, which are neither an effective use of my time, nor are they likely to increase my motivation to continue spending a considerable part of my free time on Dolphin.

On the other hand, if we just keep the report open,

(a) Future maintainers can easily re-evaluate the decision,
(b) I waste less time (I already regret that I commented here at all), and
(c) users who are interested in this feature can find the report more easily.

You might argue that the entire process around reporting feature requests for Dolphin (and probably most other parts of KDE) is completely broken, and I fully agree. But it all boils down to the problem that there are lots of people who submit reports or comment on reports and expect some sort of reaction, and only extremely few people who handle those reports. Unless that changes anytime soon, I have little hope that the situation improves.
Comment 19 Peter Tselios 2017-10-19 19:50:39 UTC
Hello,
Well, since 2013 a lot of things changed and the most important one is the fact that we don't have Konqueror as a file manager anymore. 
Konqueror was the choice of a lot of people because it provided "advanced" features, like for example the ability to split views in every possible way. 

All I ask from the current maintainer (I am sorry, but I didn't find his/her name via a quick G-search), to reconsider to implement this. I totally understand that it's now just a simple decision. But things are changed. Why not to change his mind?
Comment 20 Christophe Marin 2019-01-28 09:27:16 UTC
*** Bug 403679 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 21 dpecka 2019-01-28 09:57:20 UTC
*** Bug 403679 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 dpecka 2019-01-28 10:01:25 UTC
hello ... I am going to change the Summary to fit better .. original summary was:

``Ability to split view horizontally would be useful for portrait displays''

-> new:

``Re-Add multiple split + horizontal split features''

as they were both working in past and they were removed in some early 4.x release.

regards, dan
Comment 23 Christoph Feck 2019-09-25 19:26:22 UTC
*** Bug 412316 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 24 hyiltiz 2020-05-27 22:22:56 UTC
*** Bug 389823 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 25 hyiltiz 2020-05-27 22:39:43 UTC
It would be really interesting to know whether this feature is regarded as WONTFIX according to the Dolphin Development Philosophy [1]. There are many users who frequently ask for it, and tried to rely on it (e.g. by switching to Konqueror when needed). But driving frequent users of Dolphin away into Konqueror is not really the solution. Dolphin pretty much has all the file managing powers Konqueror has; I know it is embeded, but there are some tiny differences, such as the types of URL's supported, embedded viewing of archives and images etc. While some of those features doesn't strictly qualify as "file management", splitting views more than once both horizontally and vertically would definitely benefit a lot of the workflow.

One of my typical workflow: (I know it can be implemented differently via bookmarks or tabs etc., but none is as straightforward as just multiple split views): I have a tons of files in my ~/Downloads which I organize occasionally. Most of them go to a few different places: ~/Documents/xxx, ~/Documents/yyy, ~/.Trash/, ~/some/temporary/folder/to/be/processed/then/archived-or-sent. Sometimes I end up having multiple versions of the same file over a long period of time, so if I can see each view, then I'd just move an old version / duplicate to trash rather than moving it over to the respective folder 

[1] https://invent.kde.org/system/dolphin
Comment 26 diminombre@gmail.com 2023-08-15 20:12:58 UTC
This feature request is still valid now (year 2023)
I am talking from my perspecive, and it will be amazing have multiple split vertical and horizontal like some IDE software (vscode, atom, etc)