“There was a big discussion about this a few months ago in a
gnome mailing list but here is a recap: Nautilus supports script
addons that apply certain actions on the selected files or on the
currently open folder. It also has a MIME backend and so certain
actions only happen to the correct files. However, the problem here
is that the Gnome Project makes no real usage of this ability.
Instead of shipping with 2-3 important addons (e.g. ‘Open Terminal
Here’ or ‘Bulk Rename’ or ‘Compress It’) it has now completely
taken out that context submenu if no scripts are installed on the
user’s scripts folder. So the problem is now even worse than
before, as less and less people even get to know that Nautilus has
such support for addons. Addons are a lifesaver and a great feature
overall, because they extend the file manager’s abilities ‘for
free.’“The second problem is that third party Gnome developers haven’t
realized the importance of creating addons and so all we have are a
bunch of bash and perl scripts instead of invoking a well formed
API for this sort of job and writing something with a GUI front end
(e.g. for the Bulk Rename). Applications like File-Roller add their
own menu entries on the Nautilus context menu instead of doing it
the right way and placing their entries on an addons submenu,
keeping the root submenu clean and without changing too much
(depending if something is selected or not). BeOS Tracker supports
addons with a clean API and PathFinder too, and we have word that
Apple will do so as well for Finder…”