Re: CD Writing Proposal

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

Hi,

Benjamin Kahn wrote:

> 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.) 

<snip>

> 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.
IMHO we should not force the user to insert a blank cd before creating 
the list of files and in particular I don't like having "yet another 
confirmation dialog" in the way before starting.
I see use cases (not made up, they happen to me) where I would not want 
to insert the blank cd at the beginning, the main one being the following:
sometimes I want to burn also files that come from another CD, if I was 
looking for those files it's highly probable that I am already 
navigating such a CD in nautilus and I want to drag a couple of files to 
the new CD, I don't want to have to unmount, insert the blank cd, 
dismiss a dialog, unmount the blank cd, eject it, reinsert the old one 
etc... note that I'm using a laptop, so it has only one CD drive.

Beside what happens if I put in a 650 MB cd (do they still exist ;-) ?), 
then I see that the collection of files I want to burn takes 680 MB and 
I want to change the cd with a 700MB one?

So the behavior I'd really like in this case is:
1 - have a clear indication of what amount of space take the files I put 
on the burn list
2 - when at the end I press "burn", I should be asked to insert the 
blank CD if it's not in yet and once the cd size has been detected be 
warned if it doesn't fit.

possible enanchement:
- have a nice progress bar describing the amount of space left; if the 
blank cd is already in the exact size should be used, otherwise 
reasonable defaults, for instance if it's detected that the drives 
cannot burn DVDs the progress bar could be blue untill 650 MB, become 
yellow from 650 to 700 and red above 700.

ciao
   paolo