Re: gmc idea

["Jesse D. Sightler" <jsight pair com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu>
To: gnome-list@gnome.org <gnome-list@gnome.org>
Date: Saturday, October 03, 1998 7:20 PM
Subject: gmc idea


>  Maybe gmc does this already, but I think it would be helpful for new
>users if gmc would display a brief description of the standard UNIX
>directories somewhere while viewing them.  That is, instead of just
>"/etc", it might say "/etc (configuration files)" although I guess that
>the location of the description would have to be worked out, maybe
>underneath the directory and indented?
>
>  I think that probably having a graphical file browser isn't going to
>do much good if people don't know what the directories mean, and I
>remember that one of my problems when learning to use Linux (and UNIX
>in general) was getting used to the UNIX directory structure.  I'm not
>sure how elaborate this could be, but it seems like recognizing the most
>common directories would be possible.


I basically agree with this remark.  Especially judging from the number of
people who don't know why their dist puts an empty /usr/local directory out
there. <g>

Perhaps there should be an option to run GNOME/GMC in "Novice Mode" where it
does something like Win98's Web-based folders.  In other words, where the
folder is actually two panes, the one on the left showing some information
about the folder, and the one on the right showing the actual contents.  Of
course, for anyone with much UNIX experience this would be turned off (and
left off by default in the for-download versions of GNOME).

----------------------
Jesse D. Sightler
http://www3.pair.com/jsight/