Re: Volume handling proposal

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 21:25, Dave Camp wrote:
> I haven't had a chance to read this whole thread, sorry if I'm rehashing
> things.
> 
> > The desktop will contain the current Home link and trash can. Home is
> > here since it is a really frequently visited location, basically being
> > the unix version of "My Documents". Some people dislike this because
> > it creates a loop (Desktop is in Home, Desktop points to home), but I
> > think its more important to have quick access to home than being
> > "loop-free".
> 
> With the new file selector, maybe we can start making the desktop
> directory the primary storage area for files?  The cycle is really ugly,
> and will be an instant screw-up for the spatial file manager model.  The
> Desktop also has the benefit of being totally user-managed, which makes
> it a better place for them to be putting files.

Ok. So we have to figure out the relationship between home and the
desktop and what icons we want on the desktop.

> > Its might make sense to present some other hardware elements in the
> > same way as volumes, even though these are not really
> > filesystems. Things like printers and scanners. This can be useful, 
> > since these highly-visible external hardware elements otherwise have
> > no corresponding in-desktop element. However, it is also a bit
> > dangerous, since these items will look like files but really will be
> > something completely different, therefore they might break the users
> > conceptual model (what happens if you copy one to a remote share? Can
> > you rename them? What happens if you drop one in the trash? What are
> > their size? What happens if an application decides to load such a
> > "file"?). 
> 
> Almost all of the "detail" information is different.  Printers have
> queue sizes and status, not owners and modification dates.

Yeah. So, no printers in the file system! YAY!

> > Implementation
> > --------------
> 
> > Implementing "Computer" is probably done best as a vfs module,
> > although it would rarely be used by other apps than nautilus (the
> > important roots from computer are already exposed in the file
> > selector). 
> 
> Well, ideally the roots would be exposed in the file selector the same
> way they are exposed in nautilus, right?

Sure. But that would be handled by just using the list-volumes API. That
is more expressive than readdir(computer:). 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an immortal drug-addicted assassin with a secret. She's a radical mutant 
wrestler living on borrowed time. They fight crime!