Nine things you should know about Nautilus

The Nautilus program in GNOME is not only the default file manager, it creates and manages the desktop. While it looks simple on the surface, there is a lot of hidden power under the shell. The latest version of Nautilus is 2.14.0, which is included in Fedora Core 5. That's the one I poked with a stick.

GNU/Finder?

Nautilus has something of a colorful past. It was created by a company called Eazel, staffed by ex-Apple programmers that wanted to bring ease of use to the Linux desktop. A noble goal. I remember the early versions were beautiful, buggy and dog slow. Eazel burned through it's VC money and closed shop, but set the Nautilus code free. GNOME adopted the code and morphed it into the Nautilus of today. It is still beautiful, but now solid and reasonably quick.

You can still see vestiges of the Mac Finder in Nautilus from the rotating triangles that open a folder in tree view, the meta information that is stored about each directory, and the hidden trash directories that are created on each volume where you dare move a file to the trash. The visual touches are appealing; the droppings not so much. On with the list...

One: Adding Delete

The ~/.Trash directory is where files are moved if you delete local files. On mounted volumes, Nautilus will create a hidden .Trash-uid directory if you move a file to the trash, as long as you have the file permissions.

I'd rather have Nautilus simply delete files on mounted volumes instead of creating hidden trash folders. To add a true delete option, go to Edit > Preferences, Behavior tab and select the "Include a delete command that bypasses Trash" option. This adds a delete option to the menus. If you delete a file with the delete option, Nautilus won't create a hidden trash folder on a mounted volume.

Two: Emblems and Notes

Emblems are small icons that can be added to a directory or file to give it additional meaning. You can assign an emblem to a file by selecting the file and choosing File > Properties. From there, select the Emblems tab and choose the emblem(s) you want. They are only visible in Nautilus and don't modify the actual file in any way. Since Nautilus creates and manages the desktop, files dragged to the desktop retain their emblems.

Notes are free form text that can be assigned to a file on the Properties, Notes tab. Like emblems, they do not modify the actual file in any way. When you assign notes to a file, the file gets a note emblem.

Three: Multiple emblems

Nautilus can display up to four emblems on the same directory or file (in icon view), one in each corner. In list view, it only displays one. If multiple emblems are assigned to a file in list view, the first one assigned is displayed.

If you have an emblem and a note assigned, the note emblem appears to override the others in list view.

Four: Metafiles

Both emblems and notes are stored in XML files, one per directory, in ~/.nautilus/metafiles/. To be more accurate, a reference to the emblems is stored in the XML file. The emblem icons are in /usr/share/pixmaps/nautilus/Bluecurve/ (in Fedora Core 5).

In each XML file, there is a tag called <keyword> and emblems are stored in the "name" property. Each emblem assigned creates a new <keyword> tag. Notes are stored in the <file> tag in the "annotation" property. Here is a snippet of a metafile with the cool emblem and a note:

In addition to information about emblems and notes, the metafiles store things like window size, location, view mode, and backgrounds.

Five: View Modes

Two view modes are available, spatial and browser. Nautilus uses the spatial mode by default, which opens a new window for each folder. The browser mode offers a left pane tree view and opens each folder in the same window.

To switch the default to browser mode, go to Edit > Preferences, then the Behavior tab and check the "Always open in browser windows" box. Note: the menu options change slightly in browser mode. New options are available and some options disappear.

Six: Triple slashes and Special URIs

Nautilus uses uniform resource identifier (URI) syntax. For example, local files can be referenced in the location bar using the file:// prefix. The URI for the local root directory becomes file:/// (file:// + /), while the /etc/ directory is file:///etc/. The triple slash looks strange at first until you get used to it.

A number of special URIs are recognized. These include:

• computer:/// - objects for each mounted device, plus the network
• network:/// - available networks to browse
• burn:/// - a virtual folder for burning data CDs/DVDs
• smb:/// - available windows/samba network resources
• x-nautilus-desktop:/// - desktop objects and icons
• file:/// - local files
• trash:/// - local trash directory

Each of these URIs can be abbreviated by eliminating the triple slashes. For example, computer: and trash:.

The start-here:/// special URI that was available in older versions has been removed.

Each special URI has an associated XML file in ~/.nautilus/metafiles/ just like real directories. Since the forward slash is a shell special character, the metafile names use "%2F", the ASCII code for forward slash. So, the name of the burn:/// metafile is "burn:%2F%2F%2F.xml". This makes directory listings hard on the eyes.

Seven: The burn:/// illusion

If you select Go > CD/DVD Creator from the menu, or Go > Location > burn:///, you see the CD/DVD Creator folder with a "Write to Disc" button.

You can drag directories or files into the burn folder and it looks like they are copied somewhere. A clever illusion. The truth is that a reference to each directory or file name is tracked by the mapping-daemon. Nautilus uses these references to determine what gets burned to disc.

Eight: Nautilus Scripts

You can create scripts to run on a selection of files using any scripting language including shell, Perl, PHP, etc. This feature won't appear in the Nautilus menus until you install at least one executable script in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/.

After installing a script, navigate to the nautilus-scripts directory, then a Scripts option will appear in the File menu and in the right click menu. You can execute any script against files you have selected in Nautilus. This is a powerful way to customize Nautilus using your favorite scripting language.

Nine: Bookmarks and History

When you bookmark a directory, the location is saved in a hidden file called ~/.gtk-bookmarks. Bookmarks are stored using the URI syntax. A bookmark to the /tmp directory is stored like this:

Nautilus saves a history of the last 10 directories you have visited. When you browse the eleventh directory, the oldest one drops off the list. The history is not saved between sessions and is not written to any file. It lives in the Nautilus process memory and is lost when you logout.

History is not lost if you close all file manager windows because Nautilus manages the desktop. It continues to run and will preserve the history list until it ends, usually when you logout of GNOME.

Living with Nautilus

GNOME has come a long way in the last few years and so has Nautilus. Most of the original complaints about it have been rectified, though the switch to spatial view (long ago) caused some dissent. I have found the latest version of Nautilus pleasant to work with and a competent file manager.