Re: Trash system

[V man <venom cibs9 sns it>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Dan Kegel wrote:

> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 06:39:13 -0800
> From: Dan Kegel <dank alumni caltech edu>
> To: Pavel Cisler <pavel eazel com>
> Cc: Ryan Muldoon <rpmuldoon students wisc edu>, gnome-kde-list gnome org,
     "lsb-discuss lists linuxbase org" <lsb-discuss lists linuxbase org>
> Subject: Re: Trash system
> Resent-Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 15:38:10 +0100
> Resent-From: lsb-discuss lists linuxbase org
> 
> The following sounds like an issue for the LSB, maybe.
> 
> - Dan
> 
> Pavel Cisler wrote:
> > Ryan Muldoon wrote:
> > > One area of collaboration between GNOME and KDE (and other desktops) is
> > > handling of Trash.  I'm sure that Konqueror, Nautilus, and EFM all
> > > implement Trash differently, and this will likely cause user
> > > confusion.  I shouldn't have to think about which filemanager I used to
> > > delete a file that I need to recover.  A standard method for free
> > > desktops to handle trash would be a pretty easy area of collaboration
> > > with tangible results.  On the face of it, there are at least two
> > > issues: Location of Trash, and metadata for the trash.  The location
> > > would probably be easy to agree on, but metadata might be a sticking
> > > point.  I'd be very happy to see some effort to make a common solution
> > > though - it seems Trash handling is along the same lines as DnD and
> > > Cut+Paste for users - an everyday basic function that would be annoying
> > > to have to think about.  Trash should (ideally) just be trash.
> > > 
> > > Of course, a more ambitious goal would be to implement whatever is
> > > decided in GNU "rm" to have a wholly consistent behavior on free
> > > systems, but one step at a time.
> > 
> > It would be really cool to unify the Trash system between the two
> > desktops.
> > 
> > I worked a bunch on Trash in Nautilus and would very much like to
> > cooperate on this.
> > 
> > We use multiple Trash directories on all the partitions that the user
> > tries to delete items and present them as a unified virtual directory in
> > Nautilus.
> > 
> > We have quite an elaborate heuristic that picks the location of the
> > actual physical trash directories on the different partitions. 
> > 
> > While it is really easy to place a Trash directory into your home
> > directory for trashed items from the same partition (we use ~/.Trash),
> > it's harder to pick a good place on the other ext2, etc. disks because
> > there is no standard. 
> > 
> > We create Trash directories on the other partitions as needed, first
> > time a user actually tries to delete something. This helps find a good
> > location that is actually user-writable. Our heuristic starts looking
> > for a user-writable location in the same directory as the original
> > trashed item and continues going up in the partition hierarchy, trying
> > to place the trash directory as close to the partition's root as
> > possible. We then create a trash directory in that place, it is in the
> > form ".Trash-<user_name>", eg. ".Trash-pavel" and we cache the location
> > of it so we know where the Trash is next time. If the user mounts a
> > partition that has not been mounted before (no cached Trash location),
> > we search for the Trash on it first - it could have had Trash from a
> > different system and we want to reuse that.
> > 
> > This way we end up not trying to create trash on disks that have no
> > user-owned (and therefore user-deletable) files, we can deal with a
> > directory that contains user-owned items on a partition that is
> > otherwise root owned, etc.
> >
> > This heuristic is designed to deal with the flexible and free form
> > nature of partitions on Linux and unix systems. It would be much easier,
> > of course, if there was a standard on Trash directory placement on
> > partitions that most file managers adhered to which defined a single
> > location for Trash on each of the partitions. I'd be more than happy to
> > get rid of our complex heuristic if that were the case.
> 
> 
There are too many desktop environment outside, not just gnome kde, if we
standardize trash, then will cde trash, xfce trash, any other DE or WM
with a trash be complient?

I am quite sure that many desktop will be happy to be compliant, but not
cde, and also if ugly, is a big outsider.

I would say, that we should focus to accolpish actual stuff before
start also those secundary aspects.

Luigi Genoni