Streamline the monitoring/pouncing policies

[gijzelaerr]

at 2010-02-12 15:06:50 Oleg Smirnov reported:

Streamline the monitoring/pouncing policies

[gijzelaerr]

Original comment thread migrated from bugzilla

at 2010-02-12 15:06:50 Oleg Smirnov replied:

Post-release, I should look into cleaning up Purr's file and directory
monitoring scheme. A separate sidebar or floating New Stuff dialog should list
the new files showing up in each monitored directory (perhaps integrated with a
standard file dialog? Or just with a list of files, in a separate pane?), so the
user can click or drag them over to his New Entry dialog. The current scheme of
dumping everything into New Entry automatically gets tiresome when a lot of
files are being created at once.

The following policies should be available to every watched object, and should
be changeable from the New Stuff dialog, from the entry editors, and from the
monitored directory list. Perhaps use a single icon to indicate these?

• banish: ignore changes, never list the file anywhere until it is explicitly
  un-banished by the user. Useful for aips++ .img and .compleximage files, and
  other annoying crap that gets created wily-nily.
• ignore: notify of changes by moving the file in the New Stuff dialog box (i.e.
  visual hint only). Perhaps this should be the default (i.e. when nothing else is
  assigned?)
• pounce: move file to the New Entry dialog automatically when changed.
• POUNCE!: move file to the New Entry dialog, pop up the dialog.

For directories, this policy setting should apply to newly created files, and to
updated files that have no policy of their own (or should this be two separate
settings?) Some kind of policy assignment based on globs would also be good. A
list of policy assignment rules should be made available from the New Stuff pane
(integrate this with the directory list)? Use a treeview: under each directory,
we list entries for specific patterns or files from that directory. When a file
is marked with a pounce policy, it gets into that list.