Re: [Nautilus-list] tree view

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Mudiaga Obada <obada cs uni-frankfurt de> writes:

> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> On hearing "a well thought out version of this feature", I get the
> notion someone might end up "inventing" another technology (and
> another lame acronym for it) just to cut 'n paste files.

My personal problem with Cut & Paste for files is that it is an
over-extension of the Cut and Paste metaphor, in my opinion, a bad
one, and this shows through in some ways.

For instance When you "Cut" files on Windows, they do not really go
away, unlike text that you Cut. They turn into a ghostly half-existing
state. Only when you Paste them do they really start to go away from
the old location.

There is also the fact that having a "Copy" operation for files that
means "move to the clipboard" is confusing, since many users think of
"Copying" as something more like the "cp" command when the context is
files.

It may be that there is no better design than this for the
feature. All I am suggesting is that whoever implements it should
think about the alternatives first and not just blindly copy Windows.

I do agree with you that it is convenient and I too have seen many
windows users doing it. I certainly think there should be a nice
non-drag-and-drop way to copy.

> If I'm not seeing something wrong, implementing cut n' paste
> functionality equivalent to drag n' drop's is trivial.

I think you are wrong about how trivial this is. It has many UI
implications. Consider for instance, the half-gone state of files you
have "Cut" but not "Pasted".

 - Maciej