The dolphin terminal panel is a absolute Godsend. It speeds up my workflow enormously. It is also possible to preview a text file in the Information panel. What I think would be really nice, is a panel offering a minimal text editor in the same way. Usually, if I am in dolphin, I open those files in Kate. I often have many windows open, and sometimes this interrupts workflows a bit. For making small edits to several files in a folder for example, it'd be much quicker to be able to edit and save files in-place within my (already open) Dolphin window, rather than selecting those files, opening them with Kate, finding them amongst all the other files I have open, saving them, and closing back down and going back to Dolphin. Arguably Kate offers this in reverse - I can open a folder in Kate and achieve things like this. But it'd be nice to have the option. If I'm currently in Dolphin, I'd like to be able to edit and save text files within Dolphin, rather than have had to open this folder in Kate already. This kind of thing comes up when I am mostly browsing and managing files, not necessarily expecting having expected to need to edit them, but eventually I find out that I do. Managing things under /etc feels a good example. I am going fishing amongst multiple folders for system defaults, things I may or may not have tuned already, and now to paste a single line from firefox into a config file, it'd be much quicker to be able to do so without needing to open a separate editor. I expect a fully-fledged text editor panel offering functionality similar to Kate would probably be too cluttering. I think something like a KTextEditor, or whatever appropriate widget, would be more than enough, with basic menus/action buttons for save, save as, copy,paste, etc. and then maybe an "open in Kate/other editor" option that would bring up a more complete editor, and ideally communicate unsaved changes with that so that I can resume where I left off if my edits turn out to be more complicated. But would be more than happy with a basic editor panel. Thanks! STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. 2. 3. OBSERVED RESULT EXPECTED RESULT SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: KDE Frameworks Version: Qt Version: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Created attachment 179114 [details] Mockup
This is technically possible if we integrate support for the katepart. I'm not sure Dolphin's maintainers consider it in-scope though. I do know Konqueror can already do this, and maybe Krusader can too?
I would indeed consider this out of scope for Dolphin. As Nate pointed out, Konqueror actually has that feature. You might want to consider that application even though I know that it received less development time recently. As far as Dolphin is concerned, there are plans to offer a QuickLook-like feature that opens file "previews" for files by pressing Space in Dolphin. We are currently aiming for an application called KiView to do that. It might be in scope for that project to also allow light editing. That would probably still be more cumbersome than having a panel though.
Maybe a different question comes up - I see there are addons for Dolphin, mostly pertaining to VCS etc. Is it possible for an addon to provide a side-panel? As I wouldn't disagree that functionality like this perhaps belongs better within an addon. I like the idea, others may have no use for it. If not already possible, would that be something more suitable and that people would like to see? IF so can open a new request for discussion there.
(In reply to stellarpower from comment #4) > Maybe a different question comes up - I see there are addons for Dolphin, > mostly pertaining to VCS etc. Is it possible for an addon to provide a > side-panel? Currently not AFAIK, but everything is possible. 🪄 > As I wouldn't disagree that functionality like this perhaps belongs better > within an addon. I like the idea, others may have no use for it. If not > already possible, would that be something more suitable and that people > would like to see? IF so can open a new request for discussion there. The thing is that this is very far out there. It basically needs someone with a very strong vision spend a lot of time not only on the infrastructure to add this possibility for addons but then also write an addon which makes use of it. And then we only have one user of this API and it is not clear whether more will come or not. The current VCS addons for Dolphin don't see a ton of change either. And at the end of the day there is still the question what use there is in having any such user interface as a panel in Dolphin. Opening a separate window instead is not all that weird and has the advantage to not destabilise or crash Dolphin. So please feel free to open a new feature request for this if you want, but it needs someone to then figure out how feasible it is, if the effort is well-spent, and if the drawbacks aren't way bigger than any expected advantages.
All fair points, don't disagree. I'm thinking at the simplest would it be possible just to have a QML widget that receives the path/URI to the file in question, and can then render what it wants from that? Possibly file metadata too, but that could be looked up independently. The media preview in the details panel is a really nice feature, and to me that seems in a similar vein to this request - I could just right-click and open-with mpv or VLC or whatever, but for me it's proven to be a really useful feature, and I'm not sure how many people requested it initially and haven't seen anything similar in another file manager - but it is nice to have. Whilst "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" on that panel, it seems like it could be worked into a (built-in) plugin in a similar way, taking the current UI into QML and providing a way for it to hook entries into the menu bar for enabling/disabling it.
Well Dolphin's UI isn't written in QML, so I'm afraid not.
(In reply to stellarpower from comment #6) > All fair points, don't disagree. I'm thinking at the simplest would it be > possible just to have a […] widget that receives the path/URI to the file in > question, and can then render what it wants from that? Possibly file > metadata too, but that could be looked up independently. Well, maybe if some widget existed that could be easily integrated, this would indeed not be too much trouble, but I would still say that it doesn't really currently fit into Dolphin's scope. I guess if it was very little code, it could be considered, but it would stay a bare-bones feature then and users would not necessarily be happy about an imperfect text editor either as long as they know that other text editors in KDE work better. At the end of the day an integrated text editor really sounds like a Konqueror feature and workflow. If there is interest in that, I would hope that project sees more contributions eventually.