File management: a variation of pickup and drop

[Andrew Kerr <andrewkerr ozemail com au>]

I added an idea to this bug:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77293

...and thought I might CC a few lists to get some feekback - hope that's
ok ;)

I mostly just trawl the archives so please CC if you want to reply
directly to me. Cheers.

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I have an idea for a variation of pickup and drop: 

* select files to pick them up (as you would before a drag and drop
between windows, and for a X-style text copy-n-paste) and drop them
from a menu (move/copy selected files to here). Advanced users could
choose to middle-click to paste files like the X-style text
copy-n-paste (but should files behave like text?).

* selection would be _toggled_ by clicking or dragging a lasso around
files (not sure if this is compatible with a single-click open style,
but I'm not sure if single click is any good anyway) and cancelled
from a menu (as well as with a keybinding; ESC?).

* selected files would persist (ie: stay selected between
directories/folders/whatever) until cancelled (manually or by menu).
This allows moving or copying (or maybe even other file operations)
from multiple sources from only one window.

I think this seems to map fairly well with current drag-n-drop and
cut-n-paste functionality and should be able to be made interoperable
with other filemanagers etc.

Problems would include:

* dealing with hierarchies (say, if you selected some items and then
their parent - though really, selecting a parent would select all
children - I want to get you thinking about possibilies I've missed ;)

* dealing with permissions (like a mixture of rw and ro files - mostly
a ui issue - how do you want to inform the user?)

I'm sure this is not the best solution, but I thought I might take
some ideas to a logical conclusion in the hope someone might come up
with something good ;)

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Take care,
Drew.