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In terms of elegance and clarity, I'd like to see Dolphin (or Konqueror) be able to recognize and hide files that are really just metadata files.

For example, I have a Windows partition that I need to browse, but I wind up seeing all of these desktop.ini, Thumbs.db, picasa.ini, or app-specific-file.xyz that clutter up the view. They're just another detail that I have to skip over in my mind, or teach someone, "Oh, that's normally invisible in Windows but it's not in Kubuntu--you can ignore that."

For the love of elegance, can we have something better than that?

Could we have a configuration in Dolphin that allows you to add/remove file patterns to what Dolphin considers a "hide-able file"? It could be initially populated with common metadata files such as the ones mentioned above. I don't think anyone would miss seeing those files by default.

Of course, these hide-able files can be made visible by checking the View -> Show Hidden Files menu option. They would be treated just like "dot files".

Similar to the one already found in the folderview widget?

Moult wrote:Similar to the one already found in the folderview widget?

Similar, yes, but more focused. The folderview widget is focused on general file types, not arbitrary files.

I'm thinking more of a list box that allows you to add a file pattern.

Moult wrote:Similar to the one already found in the folderview widget?

Similar but more focused on this particular usage case.

I envision a list box that allows one to add file patterns.

Doesn’t Gnome have some sort of .hidden file that lists files that are not to be shown in a directory? In KDE there is no way of hiding files except for renaming them and making them a dot file which is not always possible if an application relies on said folder (best example: Games you play on Wine that put their savegames in $HOME and make it cluttered)

BajK wrote:Doesn’t Gnome have some sort of .hidden file that lists files that are not to be shown in a directory? In KDE there is no way of hiding files except for renaming them and making them a dot file which is not always possible if an application relies on said folder (best example: Games you play on Wine that put their savegames in $HOME and make it cluttered)

Well, if Gnome has it, it's definitely not "advertised" through any configurable interface that I tried. We can do better, though.

Yes Nautilus has this feature:
http://library.gnome.org/users/user-gui ... dden-files

I think it would be nice with a global option, as well as directory-based "filters". I wouldn't add any default filters, though, since it can be confusing.

I think the best and easiest way is to follow Nautilus implementation of .hidden file. It can increase interoperability between Free Desktop because as far as I know Thunar and PCMAN also already implemented this method.

If GNOME user implemented this manually, KDE can give its user better implementation by adding user interface for doing this. Right click to the file, then edit file properties by adding check mark from file attribute to listing the file in .hidden list.

Sorry for my english.

I never knew about the .hidden file method, but it seems to affect a single-file-at-a-time. That's okay for special cases, but what about for all files named "desktop.ini"? Or all files named "picasa.ini"? That's the scope that I'm thinking about with Dolphin.

XandarKablandar wrote:I never knew about the .hidden file method, but it seems to affect a single-file-at-a-time. That's okay for special cases, but what about for all files named "desktop.ini"? Or all files named "picasa.ini"? That's the scope that I'm thinking about with Dolphin.

Just simply combine both ideas