Re: thumbs.el and transparency

[Mathias Dahl]

Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:

> I think the more complex the required window configuration, the more
> annoying -- unlike traditional applications, users usually freely do
> multiple things at once in emacs, and carefully crafted window
> setups tend to quickly get messed up and/or interfere with the
> user's other tasks.

I agree, and as I said tumme will work without any special window
configuration at all, but you would have to switch back and forth
between buffers instead. I'd love to see suggestion on how to handle
the different "views" without sacrificing usability. For example, when
the user press RET on a thumbnail image, where should the sized (or
full) image appear? Same window? "other-window"?

What I often do is to set up two windows, one above the other and keep
the thumbnail buffer on top and the image display buffer below:

  +---------------+
  |  thumbnails   |
  |               |
  +---------------+
  |               |
  | image displ.  |
  |               |
  +---------------+

That lets me see all thumbnails, move around them and easily display
an image in the other window at the same time. Of course, this fits
well with my needs and your milage will vary.

> Having one "primary window" where the cursor is and another slave
> window that gets popped up is manageable enough, and the most common
> model in emacs; is there a command to invoke tumme that just give you
> the "thumbnails" window, without requiring the "window configuration"
> and "dired" steps?

Not yet. When you call `tumme-display-thumbs', the thumbnail buffer is
created and all thumbnails that was marked in dired will be displayed
there, but the buffer is not opened. Maybe a simple `display-buffer'
would do? This function does exactly that:

(defun tumme-display-thumbs-and-buffer (&optional arg append)
  "Call `tumme-display-thumbs-and-open' and display thumbnail buffer.
See command `tumme-display-thumbs-and-open' for details about the
arguments.
"
  (interactive)
  (tumme-display-thumbs arg append)
  (display-buffer tumme-thumbnail-buffer))

or, add the call to `display-buffer' last in `tumme-display-thumbs',
which should probably be customizable.

Does that work?

> If the thumbnails could actually be inserted in the dired window that
> would be coolest of all... then tumme would feel much more integrated
> (at the expensive of requiring more space for lots of thumbnails).

Agree, but that felt too advanced for me.

> [BTW, it seems to display lots of gratitous messages in the buffer
> when generating the thumbnails, like:
>
>   (Shell command succeeded with no output)
>   (New file) [2 times]
>   (Shell command succeeded with no output)
>   (New file) [2 times]
>
> Maybe it's using a high-level function where it should be using
> something lower-level...?]

I use `shell-command', maybe that is wrong, I don't know. I copied
much ideas and code from thumbs.el in the beginning.