Re: Volume handling proposal

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 08:37, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 02:14, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> > Alexander Larsson writes: 
> > 
> > > 
> > > I don't agree. Floppies are very seldom used these days, so i think
> > > having the "empty floppy drive" icon only in "Computer" is enough. 
> > > 
> > 
> > By doing this you are essentially hiding the floppy drive from the user and 
> > restricting the descoverability of the floppy drive for users by nesting it 
> > in a folder(I've always hated "my computer" for this reason). ARe you really 
> > sure that floppies are seldomly used? I would think it depends more on the 
> > target audience. In large corporate installs this may be true, but even in 
> > university situations I still see non-technical students frequently using 
> > floppies to transfer work between their home and school machines (despite 
> > easily available network space). 
> 
> I don't think its that hidden in "Computer". Thats only one click away,
> and is the logical place for when you just physically interacted with
> the computer (inserting a floppy). Constantly having an empty floppy
> icon on your desktop seems quite in the way.
> 
> > > Well, the change was to make the Desktop directory more visible from
> > > various kinds of file selectors etc. I dunno if clicking on ~/Desktop
> > > should show the desktop, this needs experimenting. 
> > > 
> > 
> > In my opinion, ~/Desktop is an implementation detail more than anything 
> > else. I don't think users should be exposed to this in the spacial ui. So no 
> > I don't think clicking on it should "show the desktop" I also don't think 
> > the folder should be shown when viewing "Home" in the spacial ui. 
> > 
> > Another option is to write off "Home" as a unix implemenation detail and not 
> > include a link on the desktop. The file selector could default ~/Desktop as 
> > the default folder in this situation, and users might never know about 
> > "home". Its probably better to encourage users to save files to the desktop 
> > by default anyway so that they are easily discoverable and can be easily 
> > manipulated. Users can than create desktop folder such as 
> > "Desktop/Documents", "Desktop/Music" etc. to store these files in. 
> 
> This is the desktop-as-home metaphor that dave likes I think. It might
> be a good idea. I'm not against removing the Home link on the desktop.
> If we make the file-selector start in ~/Desktop this would probably work
> well.
> 

Well, I don't want to restart the desktop-as-home thread but now that
Nautilus can hide files (using .hidden), wouldn't it be a good idea to
simply set the desktop to ~/ ? My point is that if you don't show the
Home icon on the desktop and make ~/Desktop the base directory for both
Nautilus and the file selector, ~/ becomes an unreachable path for most
users. So why not simply using ~/ as the desktop ? That would
automatically make legacy apps to default to the desktop and hat would
avoid the "loop" problem.

> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>  Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
>                    alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
> He's a scarfaced voodoo gentleman spy with a secret. She's an elegant mutant 
> nun with someone else's memories. They fight crime!