Re: Virtual Directory Structure

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom infernal-iceberg com>]

temp123 brindabella org (2001-05-13 at 1856.37 +1000):
> The web browsing analogy reminds me of virtual web hosting - such as when 
> www.myhost.com is hosted under a directory 
> like  /home/users/~user/dir1/dir2/.  The directory structure under 
> www.myhost.com is abstracted from the actual directory structure.

I think you are mixing visitor's point of view with owner's.

> Similarly, i suppose my original post was about just the file manager 
> presenting (serving?) to a user an abstracted structure.  Perhaps each user 
> would see their own virtual *host* like:

Can you explain me why my hosting service has this in the MOTD:

Type 'cd web' to access your personal web page
Type 'cd ../../web' to access the site web
Type 'cd ../../ftp' to access the anonymous FTP site
Type 'cd' to return to your home directory

I guess it is due the fact what the visitor see is not the same to
what the owner will when working in (not viewing) the site. Visitors
will never see the guts, or if the pages are dynamic or static, or if
a database is local or remote. Owner will see it every time he has to
do something with the site, other than testing as visitor.

> [-] joeblow.localhost.localdomain  =  /home/joeblow
>       [+] Desktop = /home/joeblow/Desktop
>       [+] Documents = /home/joeblow/Documents
>       ...
>       [-] System  =  /
>            [-] home/
>                 [-] joeblow/
>                      [+] Desktop
>                      [+] Documents

Is this a loop? That is asking for user confusion (or laugh if you
want to play, /home/sweet/home/sweet/home/sweet/home/). In least
dangerous case a single nesting of A inside A.

>       ...
>       [+] Removable media   /mnt/
>       [+] Hardware Devices   /dev/
>       file1.txt
>
>
> It's logical, when looking for what you want, to start at the top.  The 

No if the things are sorted, or do you start searching things in books
by the cover? When you know what you want, you start where you think
it is faster or avaliable (direct page, index, glossary...). Thinking
that you always have to start at the center / top does not seem
reasonable, that would mean things are not very well sorted and the
user will want to navigate all.

And Unix provide things like $HOME, ~, cd (without params) plus GNOME
(KDE, and many more) home button, which move you back to a safe place
in a sec.

> sort of users who don't administer the system would prefer the system stuff 
> to be nested rather than the files they typically use.  Clearly, these are 
> the sort of user that this sort of thing would be aimed at.

Hehehe, so for home machines, what?

> On the other hand, i guess it doesn't amount to much more than what the MS 
> file manager does.  In tree view, it makes "My Computer" look like a *real* 
> directory hanging beneath the user's "Desktop" which is at the top - it 
> just *displays* a couple of things above c:\ for ease of user access.  In 
> it's simplest form the file manager need only *display* /home/joeblow at 
> the top and stick "/" under a bogus "System" folder.

If you are going that way, you need to apply that thing everywhere
(and hope it works, which MS did not seemed to manage). You can start
convincing everyone in the field where GNOME can be used, from game
makers to database coders.

> Trivial deception?

Frustrating I would say. The MOTD in the hosting provider saved me
some minutes navigating the system, and I already was expecting some
kind of virtual system, imagine a person that though there was no
virtual at all.

GSR