Re: Not OK computer:/// [was Re: Should Desktop = Home?]

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 08:46:50 +0200
> From: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>
> To: Gabriel Bauman <gabe bravenet com>
> Cc: "desktop-devel-list gnome org" <desktop-devel-list gnome org>,
> Subject: Re: Not OK computer:///   [was Re: Should Desktop = Home?]
>
> On Wed, 2004-10-06 at 13:29 -0700, Gabriel Bauman wrote:
> > > > For special locations, how about something like:

> > >  desktop:storage
> > >  desktop:applications
> > >  desktop:trash

This is again replacing one bad protocol with another.
For it to be worthwhile to change to yet another protocol it would at
least have to be gaining us consistancey with KDE which this proposal
would not.

All things considered computer:/// seems reasonable as it has only limited
exposure and it is only temporary as from this dicussion I do not anyone
believes it to be an ideal solution.

> d) The fact that we have the "Computer" location in gnome and the exact
> behaviour of it is very much a design decision about how gnome wants its
> desktop to look and work. You'll have a pretty hard time to standardize
> that and make other people use it (you'd turn them into Gnome). And when
> you've done that you've basically frozen that part of Gnome from further
> development forever as we can't change it. Same with "applications://",
> we'll hopefully be trying to get rid of that in 2.10.

It is a clever design and it presents a much simpler representation of the
filesystem to the normal user and I do genuinely like it and it is a clear
usability improvement.

My only issue was with the implementation.

I had already gathered that there were efforts to get rid of URI's but the
relatively recent addtion of another URI namely computer:/// seemed like a
step backwards.  It made me doubt if it really was a generally held design
goal not to introduce more URIs.  I am very glad to see you saying that
applications:/// will be getting phased out and I look forward to seeing
more progress in that direction.


Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org