Re: GNOME "Save as" dialog - defective by design

[Kjartan Maraas <kmaraas broadpark no>]

ons, 28.03.2007 kl. 11.47 +0100, skrev Emmanuele Bassi:
> On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 12:21 +0200, Tomasz Sterna wrote:
> 
> > > > Users expect all the file manager functionality from the dialog, so
> > > no, "users" don't expect this. and nautilus is a file *manager*, that is
> > > an application to move, copy and generally view the file system; at
> > > best, it could replace an *open* dialog.
> > 
> > Oh yes, they do.
> > Don't you want to be able to create a directory to place the file you're
> > saving in? Or rename/or move away a file to make place for the file
> > you're saving? Most users do want at least these two functionalities.
> > And they want it to behave the same way as in their file manager.
> 
> "most users"?  where?  do you have *any* usability study or even tests
> that demonstrate the need to move/copy files when saving another file?
> 
> > And when these works, they expect all the other functionality of file
> > manager to be there. "It looks like Nautilus, it works like Nautilus,
> > but copying is broken... Why?"
> 
> because it's *not* nautilus. it looks very different from nautilus, it
> doesn't at all work like nautilus and, above all, it shouldn't work as
> nautilus. the users aren't using nautilus: they are using an application
> and saving a file.
> 
> what's more important: no platform GTK+ runs on has a file dialog which
> behaves like that; win32, os-x: they all have a file selector dialog
> which doesn't at all work like their file manager applications.
> 
Win32 does the following when saving a file with the same name as an
existing file from word:

- pops up a dialog letting the user choose to overwrite, save with a
different name, or merge the changes into the document.
- lets the user rename existing files (F2 on a selected file)
- does not let the user move existing files into any subfolder in the
dir you choose to save in
- lets you create a folder to save the document in

the gtk+ file chooser dialog does this:

- asks if the user wants to overwrite the file or not
- lets you create a folder to save the document in

I think at least adding the F2 rename capability makes sense and I
*think* I remember there being a bug for it already?

Moving stuff around is another matter. I agree that we shouldn't make
the file chooser a full fledged file manager.

Cheers
Kjartan