Re: [Usability] Merge Open/Save

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, David Christian Berg wrote:

> Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:31:48 +0100
> From: David Christian Berg <david sipsolutions net>
> To: Alexey Rusakov <ktirf users sourceforge net>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Merge Open/Save (was "Re: Save Icon")
>
> On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 17:43 +0300, Alexey Rusakov wrote:
>
> > This is close to what Jef Raskin proposes in his "Humane Interface"
> > book. The idea is that instead of Open/Save there should be exactly one
> > button (he names it "Disk", IIRC), that does all the work. If the
> > document is newer on disk and not changed in the memory, it loads the
> > document. If it is changed in the memory (i.e. it is newer that a copy
> > on disk), this button performs "Save". Well, and if there is a conflict,
> > the button reveals it, and lets the user decide. I think this idea is
> > quite promising.
>
> I strongly object!

This is only a discussion which has helpfully educated us to new
possibilities on how things might be done.  Hold your horses, there is no
implementation for you to even object to yet.

> First of all, one button should not perform two
> totally different things --

Like play and pause?  I dont like it either but there is precedent and the
arguement is always that these are not actually two different things but
in fact can be thought of as one single action.  The quote Matthew
provided makes the concept of Access Disk/Storage clearer I think.

It does seem like a bit of a stretch but I would certainly like to see an
example implementation but frankly I think it is better to avoid it
entirely where possible.  (In the case of text editing we have examples
such as the Sticky Notes applet and Tomboy neither of which require the
user to save manually and reopen where they last left off.)

It is certainly a very differnt concept from what we are used to and I
think you would really need to try it out for real before you could make a
fair judgement.

> and open vs. save is definitely not similar -- and secondly I see quite
> the problems with normal interfaces. How could I open a document in a
> second tab of Gedit? How do I fit "Save as" in this concept or "Open
> Recently"?

Save As/Export would need to be covered elsewhere as what they really do
is provide the option to Copy or convert to another format.   Even if an
application were to adopt the interface Raskin suggested other features
would need to be adapted, they wouldn't simply disappear.

Tabs could setup similar to Mozilla (with certain options) and a new tab
would be opened for any new documents, and you need to manually choose to
open a 'new view' (new window).

> If a document is newer in memory, I might want to reopen it from the old
> version, because I did some changes, I shouldn't have done, and copy
> paste elements from the newer version (it always pisses me of, that this
> is not possible in Windows).

Versioning and backup could be taken into account in some other way, and a
maybe it could be presented as a more flexible Undo History.  It is hard
to predict without having a new implementation to try.

> Maybe I'm just too used the the current concept, but it simply works
> very well for me.

I'm also quite conservative about all this too.  I'm entirely unconvinced
it is worth changing the save icon.  The iconography and the concept is
more important than the realism of the graphic.  Think how often you might
have seen an image of an old rotary telephone to show the concept of a
phone even if the actual phone looks quite different.

I do hope developers will try and implement some of the ideas which reduce
the need to manually save and name every file but these things are always
more difficult than they look.  I would predict these kinds of
applications which Autosave everything being developed first for the Gnome
Palmtop Enviroment (GPE) and then later backported for use on the standard
Gnome Desktop.

It has been an interesting discussion, off to see if I can get my hands on
a copy of the "Humane Interface" and finally read what Raskin has to say,
may he rest in peace.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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