Re: volumes mark 2

["David Adam Bordoley" <bordoley msu edu>]

From: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>
> This is another proposal, which apart from the desktop is much like
> the initial proposal. Except we decided that there will be no
> printers, scanners or other hardware in the filesystem. The place for
> such things are in the control center.   

Why not include printers? In the CUA guidelines there is a very nice example 
of allowing users to print files by dragging and dropping them to the 
printer, similar to how user move files to other media. I think including a 
direct manipulation way to print like this through nautilus would be 
great.[1] 

> When discussing this someone always brings up the desktop-is-home
> setting now available as a hidden setting. In some ways this is a very
> nice setup. However, in practice there are various issues that make
> this not really possible to use by default. (Some people disagree with
> me, but lets not have that old discussion again.)

Actually I'm very happy with the new setup now. I might even start using it 
once its more polished :) 

> Also on the desktop, as before, is trash, mounted removable media,
> plugged in hardware (mp3 players, cameras etc) and links to connected
> servers. I'm not sure whether we want a "Computer" link on the
> desktop, but I think not. Its not a commonly used thing, since all the
> mounted volumes are already reachable from the desktop. 
>
> Places like home, computer and network are easily reached from menus
> in the nautilus window and the panels. 

Well not in the spacial ui. The spacial ui should probably only file, edit, 
view and help menus. (I think macos7 had a special menu to allow users to 
change the color of a folder too). Once again hiding stuff in the menus is 
not a good idea imo. You reduce the visibility and discoverability 
(especially considering that the floppy drive will apparently only be 
available from computer). There are circumstances where having access to the 
main file system is useful. I don't think we should completely hide it from 
users imo. [2] 

> I'd also like to re-introduce
> the favorites system as a way to quickly reach commonly used
> places. Favorites is more important in a spatial system, since deep
> navigation is more work.

> Since the desktop is the default place for user files now people are
> gonna have to structure it a bit better, using directories. New users
> might not immediately figure this out, so it would be nice if we could
> create a few directories by default. Say "Documents", "Photos" and
> "Music". These could then be used as default start locations for
> specific apps, allowing users to structure their files
> "automatically". 

The other option is to implement these apps as nautilus views of the folders 
(aka content specific views). 

dave 

[1] Sorry for jumping in late on this issue, I must have missed the 
conversation since I haven't been able to watch the thread that closely. Got 
to pick your battles too I guess :) 

[2] FWIW every version of macos that I'm aware of has had a desktop link to 
the "Computer".  Every version of windows has too (except for xp) .