Re: Icons of program

[Toshio Kuratomi <badger prtr-13 ucsc edu>]

There's merit in the SimpleVFS idea you propose, but I wonder what you're
really asking for -- I was replying to a post about creating a desktop that
hid most files, and I can see SimpleVFS fitting into that quite naturally.
However, there is also a place for meta-information associated with each and
every file on the system.  It seems that this is possible so what does
SimpleVFS give us that that does not?

-Toshio
On Mon, 20 Apr, 1998 at 12:33:23PM -0500, robert havoc pennington set free these words:
> 
> On Sun, 19 Apr 1998, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > 
> > I resist this idea because it tends to hide what is really on the system.
> > This is a typically Microsoft philosophy -- it (may) simplify matters in the
> > beginning, but adds confusion later on (So why don't I see the files on my
> > desktop now that I've started using the shell?  Where's the netscape file on
> > my desktop in the filesystem?)  This functionality really needs to be built in
> > from the ground up (as MacOS does.) not added on to an existing system.
> > 
> 
> I think the confusion comes from an insufficient break between the
> new and the old, easy and hard. Mac breaks cleanly, but it does so by
> eliminating the hard stuff and correspondingly some power. Gnome could
> keep both.
> 
> Why not add a new virtual file system, say "SimpleVFS." This is just a
> directory hidden somewhere, but it looks like a separate partition, or an
> ftp site, or a tarball - all things gmc handles now. It behaves just the
> same. If you want to see files from the shell, you have to move them from
> your SimpleVFS to your ext2fs. If you want files from the shell to appear
> in SimpleVFS, you move them there with gmc. (of course some moves would
> just be creating a SimpleVFS link back to the ext2fs, and SimpleVFS is
> really an ext2fs tree of .desktop text files - so manual intervention is
> possible.) If you hate SimpleVFS you don't use it, and if you hate ext2fs
> you don't use it. gmc works with both and if there's no icon info for a
> filesystem gmc does its best to make something up (using 'file' and
> filenames). 
> 
> Personally, I would use both. I'd love to have SimpleVFS to keep all my
> documents and images and apps and so on (stuff most people do with
> computers). It would also be perfect for the equivalent of the Apple/Start
> menu folders and Startup folders. I'd hate it (or any similar scheme, like
> .info files in all directories) for a big source tree like Gnome, or for a
> server, or for /usr/bin. It's slow and cluttered for those purposes. I'd
> like to keep things cleanly separated. 
> 
> Also, you want movement between the Simple and non-Simple environments to
> happen correctly anyway. For example, if I create a web site and upload
> it, gmc should automatically nuke the SimpleVFS information, because
> .info-type files don't belong on my web site. If gmc is leaving .info
> files all over the place, and people are expecting to be able to use
> gmc-tainted directories in a normal way, it's just going to be a mess.
> (One immediate annoyance I can think of is that every single shell
> tab-completion would beep. Another is that I normally won't want grep to
> act on .info files. Another is having to copy them. Another is
> directory clutter - double the files. Another is disk space. etc.)
> 
> So I'm hoping someone will code a clean break - a new VFS based on
> .desktop files. This gives you the advantages of a new filesystem, without
> actually having one. A separate coding project is just gmc-simplification,
> taking out some of the more obscure dialogs, rewording things for newbies,
> more reasonable defaults, etc. This should be independent of VFS choice. 
> GnomeFileSelection should be integrated into the whole scheme.
> 
> So that's what I'm hoping some generous hacker will do, but I'm not going
> to bet on it. :) Maybe a Gnome 3.0 project. 
> 
> Havoc Pennington
> http://pobox.com/~hp
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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@prtr-13 \ changed between then and now as what I hope to change by tomorrow."
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