Re: [Usability]Dealing with files in Gnome

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

MArk Finlay wrote:
> The (very) recent discussion on the nautilus list[1] about whether or
> not nautilus view should be editable got me thinking about the way gnome
> deals with files in general. Atm we have the "Open with" menu in
> nautilus which is divided into internal viewers and external
> applications which can both be either viewers or editors.
>
> There is a lot of duplication here. eg. we have internal and external
> image viewers: "Open with gthumb" "Open with eog" and "Open with Image
> viewer". All in all, it's less than ideal IMHO.

I only find it "less than ideal" when you have already opened a file, 
let's say an image, and you have all those options appearing as buttons 
in the sidebar: awkward and not very elegant IMHO.

> Maybe others greater than myself have done it before, but I stepped back
> and asked myself this: "A user is looking at a folder of files, what
> could they want to do with them?" There are the obvious move, delete,
> rename, copy which I'm not going to go into[2]. 
>
> Aside from those - they generally either want to view a file or edit it.
> The distinction between them is really useful as it allows us to use eog
> instead of the gimp when we just want to look at a picture.
> I may be totally wrong about that, but If I'm not then it makes sense
> to me that "Edit" and "View" be more prevelent in the general ui.
>
> Would it not make more sense to have "View with.." and "Edit with.."
> items in the nautilus context menu, than to have an "Open with.." item
> with a mixture of viewers and editors, and with no obvious distinction
> between them?

Don't forget that you might be wanting to "Listen ..." to a file, e.g. 
an MP3/ogg song. I believe "Open with ..." has to stay in its generic 
form because of this and other specific cases.

> Then there is the issue of internal viewers v's external viewers.
> Personally I think that nautilus should be a file manager and try to do
> it well and eog should be an image viewer and do it well etc.. and they
> should not overlap. I find that users get very confused when they click
> on a file and then the directory they were browsing disappears. It seems
> much more intuitive to me to have the file be "viewed" in a new window
> and have the user close that window when they are done.

So you're proposing to have an "Open in the same window" for directories 
and "Open in a new window" for files defaults? I would like such a 
chance to handle files/dirs, but it might be confusing for the user.

Ciao

--
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco      e-mail:	rosselli at cisi.unito.it
Dipartimento di Scienze			rosselli at ling.unipi.it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)