2.4 Proposed Modules - nautilus-cd-burner and gnome-vfs funkines s

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

So, there's a danger of another load thread here, but I can't help myself.
I'm sorry for the rambling nature of this email - it's because I see a
problem but not a solution:

I'm not happy with the way nautilus-cd-burner exposes the funky burn:///
gnome-vfs protocol/location, or with the strangeness of having a virtual
stuff-that-I-might-burn-soon location via the file manager.


*** gnome-vfs schemes exposed to the user:

One big clue that something is wrong is that, when you click on the Write To
CD toolbar button with nothing in burn:///. nautilus-cd-burner shows an
error dialog saying "You need to copy the files you want to write to CD to
the burn:/// location." If we can't think of something better to call it
than "the burn:/// location" then we have probably got something
fundamentally wrong.

I don't think anyone really talked/agreed about the various
applications:///, preferences:///, system-settings/// stuff before adding
them. I'd like to think we can do without some of them in future and hide
the rest as gnome-vfs programmer details. Where we do use them we need to
give the user a better visual cue that he is in a special location.
Otherwise we maybe need to prevent users from hiding the Nautilus location
toolbar, and I don't think people will like that.

By the way, I find the special control panel, fonts, printers,
dialup-connections, etc, special file manager locations in Windows strange
too, but at least they all seem to be _under_ the "Control Panel" path.


*** Possible alternatives:

Why can't we use a standard folder in the home directory for this instead of
a special gnome-vfs scheme? It might feel more comfortable than opening a
nautilus window that I won't use, just so I can see the Go menu, so I can
choose the "CD Creator" menu item.

I would be slightly happier if burn:/// was just what you saw when viewing a
blank CD in a CD-burner drive, and if that was not available in any other
way. That wouldn't allow people to create .iso with nautilus-cd-burner, but
I think it's OK to leave all but the most-obvious functionality to
specialized CD-burning apps.

I'd like to hear how Apple do this. I don't think they still make as good
decisions as they used to, but hopefully it makes a bit more sense.


I know that everyone thinks nautilus-cd-burner is cool, but surely people
recognise that there's something hacky about it?

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com