Re: Nautilus usability and nit-picks

[Michael Toomim <toomim uclink4 berkeley edu>]

Chris Chabot wrote:

> Is it the right-thing-to-do to follow the Microsoft Windows(Tm) way of 
> move/copy when our file system philosophy is so different? (thats an 
> actual question, not rhetorical) or are we over-duplicating windows 
> behaviour here?

I don't think we should.  In unix, volumes are below the filesystem 
abstraction -- volumes aren't supposed to be user-visible.

If they aren't user-visible, then they shouldn't decide user-level behavior.

I can open up / in nautilus, and copy a file into tmp/ and etc/, and the 
file will be copied to etc/ but moved to tmp/.  There isn't any visible 
difference between tmp/ and etc/, but they get different actions. 
That's bad.

And what's the benefit of copying files between volumes instead of 
moving them?  The only thing I can think of is that maybe you expected 
to keep a copy on your original volume... but if the new volume 
disconnects or disappears, you won't be able to undo your action later 
on when you realize your mistake.  Proposed Solution: when moving a file 
between volumes, put a copy of it into the Trash Can so that you can 
restore it later.  But who knows if this is an actual usability problem 
in practice.