Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.

[Warren Young <tangent cyberport com>]

Ian McKellar wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 01:27:43PM +0000, u07ih@abdn.ac.uk wrote:
> > >
> > > Remember: Users don't care about files - they care about documents. So long as
> > > they can treat their documents as distinct entities they'll be happy.
> >
> > And directories are not distinct entities on a commandline. If we have told a
> > user that their document is a single file in the filemanager (because the FM
> > handles it as one), when they get to the commandline they're going to try to do
> > cp myfile.doc /mnt/zip and it's not going to work.
> 
> "cp -R myfile.doc /mnt/zip" will work.

That's an exception, and exceptions are bad in UI design.

Take, say, StarOffice's spreadsheet vs. an EFS-enabled Gnumeric: in one,
copying a document is the same as copying a file, but in the other, it's
like copying a directory.  Or even better: someone (gasp) runs KDE's
file manager alongside GNOME's and sees two different structures.

This isn't an argument against making EFS store its contents in a
directory.  It's that, if we choose to put the document in a special
directory, it still needs to look like a directory.  If you buy that
argument, I it follows that EFS-as-directory isn't that great.

Let's not forget that GMC already has the ability to peek inside
compound files like tar files.  There's absolutely no reason why
Nautilus couldn't make an EFS file _look like a directory_.  When you
peek inside a tar file, it's obvious you're dealing with a file, but
using the tool to peek inside it.
-- 
= Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m