Re: Copy-Paste between filemanager and document editor

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 08:00:51PM -0600, Dylan Griffiths wrote:
> > What Microsoft did right there, and most users ignore, is make the drag-icon
> > different based on the default operation.
This came from the open look ui specification, and before that I suspect
the Xerox Star.

Unfortunately, by the time you are dragging, if you are moving, it's
too late to change your mind.  This destroy the principle of safe
experimentation.

The Sun implementation had a STOP key you could press to abort a drag
once you'd started it, but most people simply let go wherever they happen
to be.  For this reason, later versions of MS Windows don't let you
drag certain icons off the desktop -- stopps you putting the trash can
in yuor start menu, for example.
A fairly frequent complaint of beginners, and of many more experienced
laptop users (dragging is significantly harder with some laptop
pointing devices) is of folders dragged from the file manager /
windows explorer and dropped who-knows-where.

Again, open look had an "undo" key, but that doesn't always work for
file managers, unfortunately.

> > If you drag a file between locations on the same drive, it moves.
> > If you drag between different drives, it copies.
> > If you drag a program (exe,com,bat), it makes a shortcut.

I can never remember these things.  I agree that it should always
do the same thing (open look got that right).

Lee / Ankh

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam@holoweb.net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999