Tumbler is a D-Bus service that generates thumbnails for various kinds
of applications. Clients can pick from several schedulers and thumbnail
flavors depending on their needs. Tumbler provides a plugin interface
via which the list of supported file types can be extended. It already
ships thumbnail plugins for videos, fonts, images, ODF documents,
PDF/PS documents and RAW images. Thanks to its support for delegating
thumbnail request to specialized third-party services, Tumbler can also
be used with closed source thumbnail generators.
Originally written for Xfce and its Thunar file manager, Tumbler was
later integrated in MeeGo and is now used on the N9 as well. In this
talk, I will explain the features, design, and usage of Tumbler as well
as its current limitations. The ultimate goal is to make application and
desktop developers aware of it and motivate them to adopt Tumbler in
their software. The talk will include a live demonstration.