CD Writing Proposal

[Benjamin Kahn <xkahn ximian com>]

    This was a proposal I made a while back about improving Nautilus CD burning.  I never sent it anywhere, but I thought this was as good a time as any to send it along since the maintainership just changed.  The basic idea is to make the process a little easier to understand and discover.

I'm interested in comments.  The latest proposal is available at:  http://www.zoned.net/~xkahn/nautilus-cd-burning 
There are also glade and GIMP files there and more mockup images.

Also, please let me know if this kind of proposal should be on a different list.

How to make CD writing more transparent and easy to use with the GNOME Desktop

The current system has a number of potential problems:

• The disk being created isn't tied to a particular blank CD, it's based on an idea of disk images, a somewhat foreign concept to most users.
• Because it's impossible (or very very hard) to know the size of the blank media before it is used, size limits can't be shown.
• The whole CD burning system is not very easy to spot.

I would like to link the idea of blank media and CD burning further; a blank CD must be inserted to start assembling content to place on it.  (Although I do believe that a creating a disk image or ISO is good and maybe even somewhat common task.  My proposal will create a more explicit system for this task as well.)  

When a blank CD is inserted into the drive, a dialog should appear to guide the user to the next step.  A blank CD icon should also appear on the desktop.  Double clicking on this icon will open the Nautilus CD Creator window for this media.

A blank CD has been inserted, this dialog appears.

The user can select an action from the menu which is dynamically generated from the list of applications declaring themselves CD burners.

It is obviously possible to get to the Nautilus CD Creator without inserting a blank CD.  And this should be easier to find -- a menu item for it should appear in the Programs menu.  (Probably under Accessories, but Office or System Tools are viable options as well.)  If no blank CD has been inserted in ANY CD recorders, a dialog asking the user to insert a blank CD should appear.

Cancelling the dialog closes the Nautilus window.  Inserting a CD dismisses the dialog.
Create a Disk Image opens a new dialog requesting the Image size.
(Standard CD -- 650 MB, DVD -- 4.3 GB, etc.)  A disk image icon will appear
on the desktop in a similar fashion to the blank media.

The Nautilus CD Creator window should default to the list view so file sizes appear.  The status bar should show the amount of free space remaining on the drive.  Attempts to copy files exceeding the size of the blank media should result in a standard out of disk space message.

The Nautilus window should also have a small toolbar for this view only.  (Although it might be a good idea to adopt this toolbar for the trash view as well.)

These options are also available in the File menu as they are currently.  (Eject is new, but is important since CD Creating and blank media are now linked together.  Disk Images are "attached" and "disconnected" on MacOSX.  This terminology might be okay here as well.)

Writing the files to CD displays almost the standard write dialog.

If the media really is ejected and not written to disk first, the assembled file links will be removed.  Thus Eject is a destructive operation and should have a confirmation.  In fact, the same dialog will appear, but with an additional eject button.

This proposal should cover a number of the most common CD writing use cases:

• Wanting to copy data files onto a blank CD.
• Wanting to use third party software to perform additional CD writing tasks.

However, it does not yet cover some other common use cases:

• Multisession or Packet Written CDs.
• CD-RW and DVD-RW (although it should cover the CD+RW and DVD+RW cases, unless I'm confused.)

I have the beginnings of a concrete proposal for these optionally supported modes.  I will send an update when it is spec'd out more fully.

Attached, please find the glade files and graphics used in this email.

Please send me any comments of suggestions.

--

Benjamin Kahn <xkahn ximian com>