A Standard for Thumbnailers

[Benedikt Meurer]

Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> I can imagine, that local thumbnails can work in following order:
> 
> 0. Try to embed thumbnail into the file, which supports it, if user
>    explicitly wants it.
> 1. Try to use xattr or resources, if file system supports it and it
>    allows large enough data (may fail often)
> 2. Try dotted local directory (may fail on FAT)
> 3. Try another specified directory (may fail on read only)
> 4. Fall back to global user cache in ~/.thumbnails

Technically possible, even if somewhat complex for such a simple task as
thumbnailing. But don't you think that it will make things even less
transparent for users? Currently if you run out of disk space in you
home folder, you know exactly what to do (rm -rf ~/.thumbnails/). With
your proposal users will be totally lost then. I'd suggest to use (2)
and fallback to (4), that's in line with the current spec and helps to
keep things maintainable and transparent for users (after all this is
something that should be used by users).

Benedikt