Re: [PATCH] Change list-view rename-behaviour

[Dave Bordoley <bordoley msu edu>]

On Sun, 2003-01-12 at 12:24, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco wrote:
> I would have patched it the other way round: what's more intuitive than 
> clicking and changing an icon's name? If you click on the *icon* you 
> won't be annoyed by the rename option.
> 
> Ciao
> 

Well direct manipulation is good, however I believe that real world
experience generally has proven that click to rename causes more
problems than it is worth. Particularly in the list view, the file name
is the most obvious target for users to click on in order to launch the
file (mostly due to the fact that it is the defining attribute of the
file). In the icon view click to rename has the disadvantage that we
create different specialized behavior depending on where you click an
object, basically reducing the target size a user has for
opening/launching a file. This leads users to erroneously enter rename
mode, which is potentially dangerous and can cause data loss in the
worst case. Renaming isn't all that common of an operation so requiring
a user to use keyboard shortcut or context menu entry seems reasonable
to me at least.

dave