Re: [Nautilus-list] Integration of gmc and nautilus desktop directories.

[Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas mailhot email enst fr>]

Le sam, 14 avr 2001 07:18:40, Tuomas Kuosmanen a écrit :
> On 12 Apr 2001 12:41:59 -0700, Darin Adler wrote:
> 
> > > I heard about Tuomas' ~ idea for the desktop.  It is
> definetly an
> > > interesting concept, but one that might not fly given
> the current Unix
> > > user base.   That is just my feeling right now about
> Tuomas' idea
> > 
> > My feeling too.
> 
> Yep. It's unfortunate I think. I think there is no real
> reason why it
> couldnt work, but in practice the discussion attempts on
> IRC were
> something like this:
> 
> <tigert> Can $HOME be the desktop?
> <hacker> NO! That is WRONG! It is just plain evil!
> <tigert> Why not? Nautilus doesnt show your dotfiles on
> the 
>          desktop in any case.. It works very well for me
> with a
> temporary symlink to test it. And it makes a lot of sense
> that
> if you save a file to your homedir you can see it with
> Nautilus
> right there on the desktop!
> <hacker> But my homedir is a huge mess and it would be
> embarassing if
> everyone could see it! <- "hacker" misses the point here.
> 
> Now at this point I tried to say something like "Well. it
> takes 10
> minutes to clean it up with nautilus.. and you make
> subdirs on your
> homedir anyway to organize your stuff, right?" but usually
> the emotional
> charge for even mentioning the "$HOME should be the
> desktop" is too
> strong for most people to overcome and actually listen to
> me.. Sigh.

That goes both ways. *I* could flamme you the other way, and
i'm sure i wouldn't be the only one. As I wrote before, just
add an option is the first-time druid to move the mess in a
clean (well, sort off) My documents subfolder. (and anyway,
messy people in ~ will be messy on the desktop, just give
them some time)

> I just think it is not good to require new users to learn
> that the files
> they save are in two different places. I talked with
> Garrett Le Sage
> (the linux.com artist guy) and he said he had a lot of
> trouble
> explaining to his family (he installed Linux with GNOME
> for them) that
> the files they saved did not go to the desktop, but they
> had to find
> them in this special directory. And those people were not
> never-used-a-pc-before -level, they had some computing
> experience
> beforehand. They learned how it worked and have no problem
> now. But
> should they need to learn such at thing at all?

No. That's the perfect example. One should not design such
an important thing as file hierarchy to solve current users
cosmetic problems. One should design it so that perfect
newbies understand it at once because it makes sence.

[snip]

> Can someone with real user interface experience give some
> real input on
> this so I know if I am on crack or not? :-) 

I'm not an interface guru, but I'd say newbies gut-level
feelings are usually much more accurate than those of users
polluted by bad habits. That's why you can't have
developpers review their own software : they're so used to
their own strange hacks they don't see them as hacks
anymore.

-- 
Nicolas


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