Re: [Usability]Dealing with files in Gnome

[textshell neutronstar dyndns org]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 08:26:44PM +0100, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 17:52, textshell neutronstar dyndns org wrote:
> >
> > Please keep in mind that adding names to a list might not be enough. On of the
> > biggest problems of the cut and paste stuff in the file-manager is that copy
> > doesn't copy the file. So the user *thinks* he can delete it and later use
> > paste. I think this general problem applies to Pick and Drop as well. I think
> > protection against deleting a picked file is important. Maybe Nautilus could
> > hold an file descriptor open for all picked files (Inux would ensure that the
> > files won't go away, either by umounting or deleteing).
> 
> That would only work on local files though.

On everything that is local enough to be managed by the kernel and has remotely
posix semantics(this should include nfs and similar). For other Protocols it is
much more difficult to get that effect. One might just start the download in
the background (opens an fd on the server. the recieved data is most likly
needed later anyway).

> 
> What would happen if nautilus hung and had to be killed? Would the file
> descripter go with the processes, or would it never close?
> 

The kernel deallocated all kernel-level resources if a process terminates
(normals or forcefully). So that shouldn't be a problem (the fd:s should of
course not be inherited to child processes.

Martin H.