directory thumbnails

Hi

I think it is useful to be able to see some form of directory thumbnail
when browsing the file system. This is especially the case when photo
collections get large - I know that I lose track of where some images
are and a dir thumbnail provides a helpful hint as to where to look. 
I have been unable to find this feature in any linux image viewer or 
browser so have set about implementing it in gqview (based on the last
stable version.)

My approach so far has been to create another directory view based on
view_dir_list. I've modified this by inserting parts from
view_file_icons to allow it to use the custom cell renderer and the
thumbnail engine.

At the moment it is a bit of a cludge as it chooses the thumbnail to
display based on the first item in the directory, without any reference
to the file-type filters. I think ideally it would be possible to select
a preferred image to use as a thumbnail for each directory but I think
this would involve extending the metadata structure to include
directories and I have yet to come up with a good idea of how to do
this.

I am interested to know what anyone else thinks of this idea, or if you
have an opinion on how to proceed. I can clean the code up a little and
send a patch if there is any interest.

John


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