Re: [Nautilus-list] Integration of gmc and nautilus desktop directories.

[Joel Becker <jlbec evilplan org>]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 07:09:19PM +0300, Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:
> On 14 Apr 2001 07:41:50 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > My guess is that tigert is right, for average users, making ~ the
> > desktop would be quite nice; they'd be able to find everything.
> > But it might annoy hackers a bit. And we've already discovered that
> > our current market is hackers and annoying them is sort of perilous.
> 
>...
>
> And yes, the next thing I'd do after sending the mail is to drag the
> file to the trashcan so it wouldnt clutter my homedir. Guess how many
> "foo-N.png" files I had in my $HOME before? I really think it reduces
> clutter when you see those temporary files on the desktop. 
> 
>...
>
> Maybe we should have an option for this in the Expert user level. Have
> the default be $HOME, but give an option to use ~/Desktop or
> ~/.gnome-desktop or whatever if an experienced user wants to.

	I'm finding this argument strangely in the reverse.  The
desktop, a thing which sits behind your windows for convenience, is a
pretty logical, not physical thing.  On Windows, MacOS, even Irix, it is
a special selection of shortcuts.
	Granted, I'm a power user who turns off a desktop completely,
but if I *were* to use it, I would want 10 shortcuts, not 300+ files
from my homedir.  Home directories fill up.  Fast.  This is really where
the clutter will come from.
	Imagine your new unix user (grandma or joe windows, it doesn't
matter).  They open up Abiword and type a letter.  They save it, and
sure enough the default spot is in their home directory.  They save it
there, either because they don't know any better, or they have learned
enough to know how cool it is that there is a directory specifically for
them.  Boom, another icon has added to the desktop.  They didn't choose
it, they don't want it, and they'll never use it.  At best the user
wants something like My Documents for quick recall of things they've
done.  They probably don't want all these files filling up the screen.
	Surely this new user can learn to create subdirs and move the
documents there.  But now the subdir is on the desktop.  More clutter.
	The desktop should be a place of user choice.  On the Macintosh,
it starts with merely the main disk folder and the trash.  Nothing else
is needed.  In the Unix world, that would be the home directory and the
trash.  The file manager (nautilus, finder, explorer, 4dwm, whatnot) can
easily allow them to view anything else they need to navigate, with at
most a couple clicks.  Anything they want added to the desktop, they
can drag and drop.  This works on all the systems so far.
	Now, I can vaguely understand why someone would *wnat* his homedir
as the desktop.  But I've never met a unix user who had less than 100
files in $HOME.  Make it configureable, but make it default to
$HOME/Desktop.  Anyone who has ever used a desktop before will
understand it, and anyone who has not will learn it, if not quickly, at
least as quickly as learning that desktop == home.

Joel

-- 

Life's Little Instruction Book #222

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