Re: [Usability] gedit's Save A Copy

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Paolo Maggi wrote:

> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:14:39 +0100
> From: Paolo Maggi <paolo maggi polito it>
> To: Liam R. E. Quin <liam holoweb net>
> Cc: Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>,
>      "usability gnome org" <usability gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] gedit's Save A Copy
>
> Hi Liam,
>
> > Long-term I'd still like to see an icon representing the current
> > document that I can simply drag onto a folder window, perhaps with
> > a modifier key (shift is usual I think) to save a copy.  The
> > experiments at Sun some 10 years ago with this model seemed
> > pretty successful.
>
> Do you have references to some reports describing these experiments?

It has come up in other discussions that on the Mac and on Windows you can
drag the icon from the title bar and it acts as a representation of the
current document.

Using drag and drop on Windows the Ctrl modifier makes sure you get a Copy
of the file and the shift modifier forces a a Move (at least it tries to,
in situations such as moving between different drives where the default
action would noramlly be to copy).

Hope that helps

By the way I think I get Murrays original point that 'Save a copy' seems
like a roundabout way to improve handling of editing Networked documents.
Save as Copy does have other valid uses but it does seem like an unusual
solution to the problem described which is what the users really want
fixed.  It is something you see a lot with open source software,
knowledgable users suggest a specific fix rather than idenifying the root
problem.  As a result we get a lot of things like Tabbed interfaces
insted of faster loading programs or better window management or we get
Find bars instead of Find dialogs that are smarter about not obscuring
search results.  (Conversely the "perfect is the enemy of the good" and
makes sense to go with what works).


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape, Draw Freely  http://inkscape.org
Abiword is Awesome http://abisource.com