Re: Just an idea to please everyone

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 05:28, Gregory Merchan wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 11:57:58AM +0100, Julien Olivier wrote:
> <snip>
> > I guess the main problem people are having with OO-Nautilus is the fact
> > that each folder will open in a new window. So, if you have some music
> > in ~/Desktop/Documents/Music/P/Portishead/Dummy/, . . .
> 
> Wait! Stop right there.
> 
> Why did you set it up that way in the first place?
> 

Why not ?

> Did your music source not have proper metadata?

yes it does.

> Did your downloader/ripper not attempt to get that metadata?

Yes, my ripper (grip) does get that metadata but it creates thos folders
itself by default (well, not the "P" but it definitely creates a folder
for the artist and one for the album by default).

> Did nothing notice a music file written to disk and try to get metadata?
> Was the metadata there, but not visible in the folder?
> 

What ? Well, Nautilus might have noticed the metadata (I guess so...)
but it didn't do anything with it.

> I'm guessing Portishead is a band and Dummy is an album.

Right.

> Why did you organize by band name first? Why not album name?

Maybe because I find it more logic...

> Why not be able to retrieve easily it either way? At a bare minimum,
> why don't you have a Details view with sortable columns appropriate to
> the data?
> 

If I open my music folder in detail view, I only see a list of folders.

> Why is the primary view of the directory ~/Desktop/Documents/Music a folder
> instead of a music player? Does a gnumeric file open in a text editor showing
> the xml, or does it open in gnumeric? Why then does the system present you
> with a folder where a music player is more appropriate?
> 

Well, simply because the default handler for folders is Nautilus. GNOME
still doesn't support determining a folder's mime-type from its content.
Maybe that should be fixed but it's not the case.

PS: I know I can change it myself but not most users.

> Why did you put the Music folder in the Documents folder?
> 

Because I like it that way. I have a Documents folder containing Music,
Videos, Code, Pictures etc...

> Sorry for the battery of questions, but every designer and programmer should
> be asking questions like these about everything. Consider:
> 
>  - If the Music icon is on the desktop, it's one step closer. This isn't
>    Windows where the desktop is a billboard for every app you install.

I like to use my desktop to store files that I'll have to use in a few
minutes, like recently downloaded files or attached files from emails.
So it can become (temporarily) cluttered very fast.

>    You don't have to deeply nest folders because of icon clutter.
>  - If the default view of the Music directory is a music player, that's about
>    3 steps closer. (I'm guessing the actual music is in the Dummy directory.)
>  - If the folder view of the Music directory is metadata-aware, then you
>    don't need deep directories to sort it - and you can change the sort
>    more easily.

Most of the times, I use Rhythmbox to play music (with its great
handling of metadata). But sometimes I want to open 1 and only 1 track
in totem. So what I do is browse my Music folder until I find that track
and double-click on it to play it using totem. So I don't want a music
player to open my Music folder as I _really_ want to browse it.

For the metadata-aware Music folder view, it would need to be a
recursively data-aware view and it would need to auto-detect the type of
the files recursively nested in the Music folder (because, in fact,
"Music" does only contain sub-folders). Currently, I don't know a way to
have such a view in Nautilus.

>  - If something (say, the file _manager_) detects a music file and can
>    get some metadata, you don't have to. Even if the initial metadata is
>    sparse (e.g., file named ABCD1234 and nothing else), there's still the
>    data itself. Maybe the best the system can do is a fuzzy match - e.g.,
>    audio data is similar to audio data from Quux genre. But, hey, computers
>    are stupid and the smart user (relatively, any user) can have some
>    indication (maybe an emblem) that the computer is confused and say,
>    "Ha ha! Stupid computer! That's Portishead, not Radiohead." This should
>    not be popping up an alert or requiring any data from the user! What's
>    needed is a modeless indication to the user that the computer is confused;
>    something like the "alarms" discussed in the 8th chapter of
>    "Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines - Advanced Topics":
>      http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/at/book/index.html
>      http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/at/book/Alarms.html
>    That, and a easy way for the user to correct the computer.
> 
> This example is specific to music and mentions technology I've never even
> seen - audio analysis to identify genre, band, etc.[*] - but I hope you can
> see that similar things apply to other types of data.


> Another example: email. If ~/evolution were renamed to Mail (either in $HOME
> or on the desktop), and the file manager recognized it as a collection
> of mailboxes instead of just a directory, then double-clicking the Mail icon
> on the desktop or in the home folder could open Evolution instead of just a
> folder. The user should not need to be bothered by the implementation detail
> of what application presents the view, but the programmers and designers
> need that detail. I'm not suggesting the file manager handle mailboxes,
> though that shouldn't be hard to do for a fallback.
> 
> Deep hierarchies are not a problem for an object-oriented user interface so
> much as they are a problem for users. Lack of a model, or the presence of a
> bad model, has exacerbated the problem. Though humans naturally create
> hierarchies, they are more flexible, redundant, and intricate than any
> computer hierarchy. Even in that most obvious hierarchy, taxonomy, there
> are at least two major theories of classification, occasional upper-level 
> restructurings, disputes, and "hard cases". Human hierarchies tend to be
> expedient and unprincipled, with notable exceptions in kind and degree in 
> science, business, armies, and governments. Where hierarchies are deep,
> the humans often specialize and deal with only shallow part.
> 
> I hope this change in Nautilus will discourage managing depth and encourage
> eliminating depth.
> 

I agree with what you suggest. But it's not there NOW. So that doesn't
answer my question.

> Cheers,
> Greg
> 
> [*] Maybe this kind of audio analysis does exist. I've seen car radios that
>     adjust to the type of music a station plays, but that may be because
>     of "metadata" in the signal.