Re: Global templates

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Hello Danny,

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:

> > default. But not trusting distributors to handle such a feature
> > responsibly is a bit condescending. We need this, so that when for
> > instance Abiword is installed, all users get a 'Abiword document' item
> > under their right mouse button. Besides reducing the time needed to
>
> See, thats not what it was created for.

Maybe, maybe not. In my opinion, though, it's one of the most useful 
things that can be done with it.

> Now, every day, instead of writing the document anew, he jusT "copies"
> the template.

That's another valid use case, yes.

> You'd be surprised just how often such "half-filled documents" are 
> needed.

Not at all.

> What you want to use this for is something completely different, you
> want the system to be "document-centric", like win98 and os/2 are.

OS/2 infinitely more than windows anything, I dare say, but yes, 
absolutely, that's what I would like!

> However, you will end up with a huge menu if you put each and every app
> that is installed in there.

I think I have restated often enough by now that I don't want the 
*default* menu to grow over ~5 well chosen productivity templates. 
Ohterwise, you lose overview, and it would defeat the purpose.

> Note that you can have an app installed just because you want to read
> some file someone else sent you, and you dont neccessarily ever create
> files yourself using that app

I'm sure there are lots of fringe use cases that don't require 
installing a template. That doesn't mean the central use case doesn't 
warrant it.

> That said, after you implemented what you called '"trash" (hide)' right,

A crazy idea perhaps, but the 'Open with' properties tab might even have 
a checkbox to indicate which apps are allowed to provide a template for 
a particular document type.

> and, on login, ask the user if he cares about creating documents of the
> recently installed apps "etwetwe Document" and "ktrze Document",

I doubt very much if it is a good idea to present the user with 
workflow-disturbing questions that will be clicked away thoughtlessly 
anyhow.

regards,

--
Reinout van Schouwen