Re: volumes mark 2

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

Sorry to jump in the discussion a bit late, but these weeks I don't have
an internet connection most of the time :(

On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 15:41, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> I'd like to propose we use a model that Dave calls desktop-as-home. In
> this model all the files the user normally handles (written documents,
> downloaded files, etc) are stored inside the desktop (typically in
> subdirectories reachable directly from the desktop), much as if the
> desktop were the actual homedir.
> 
> There would be no home icon on the desktop, and the file selector and
> other things should default to the Desktop for loading and saving
> files. (Technically this is easily accomplished by starting apps with
> ~/Desktop as the current working directory.)
I would tend to another solution: The Documents, Pictures, Music folders
are in ~ but there are icons on the desktop which open these folders.
The icons can be purely virtual (like the Trash icon) or
.desktop-Entries. The advantage (and disadvantage) of the virtual
version is that a user can't accidentally (but also not consciously)
delete such an icon.
The advantage is that the Documents folder's location remains in the
home directory, which is IMO much more logical than in the ~/Desktop
directory. Imagine you use a console editor to modify a document, why
should we need to use the ~/Desktop directory in a console?

> 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.

- Trash: fine

- Mounted removable media / plugged in hardware: What about one (virtual
or .desktop) icon named Storage or perhaps Devices which would be a
container of all media etc. This way the desktop won't get cluttered.
IIRC Ximian introduced a devices:// uri, something like that would be
fine.

- Links to connected servers: Similar as above, show the connected
servers in the network:// window and put a network icon on the desktop.

- "Computer" link: IMO the whole "Computer" thing is not really needed
with the Storage/Devices location.

> Places like home, computer and network are easily reached from menus
> in the nautilus window and the panels. 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.
Also Documents, Pictures, Music and Storage/Devices (instead of
computer) should be in these menus. Favorites are fine.

> This setup completely avoids the desktop <-> home loop, and avoids the
> problem of desktop-is-home, while still giving you most of the benefits.
The benefit of a logical place of the Documents folder is missing in
your proposition. My solution also avoids the loop, the
desktop-is-home-problem and has a nice Documents folder location (nice
in respect of broad standard and console use).

> Note: If you're an old grey-beard like me you can easily drag a
> home-link to the desktop, or drag a navigation-window launcher to the
> panel. What we're trying to set up here is a default way for causal
> users to handle the system in a productive and non-confusing way.
Agreed. In my solution I left away the home-link, too.

> 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".
Yep, but create these in the home folder and just put links on the
desktop as proposed above.

> The hard part about such directories like this is that they need to be
> translated, and the apps using them need to find them, but the apps
> may be running in different locales etc. Furthermore, it would be nice
> if the directories could be renamed and things would still work. One
> way this could be done is to place a ".docdir" file in
> ~/Desktop/Documents, and look for that when locating the
> directory. This is pretty fast to locate the few times you need it,
> and the result is easy to cache (you just need one stat to validate
> the cache). This even allows you to rename the directory if you
> want. (And if the ~/Desktop/*/.docdir is not found we'll use ~/Desktop
> as the default instead.)
If we use .desktop-Files or purely virtual icons, this won't be a
Problem and the folder locations could be fixed.

I'd like to bring up an additional idea. Put all the automatically
generated / virtual icons of the desktop on a panel, too. This could be
in an applet or in the notification area or whatever, the main point is
that these icons should always be visible. This idea is another reason
for combining all the removable media in one and all the network servers
in one icon; we can't have dozens of icons by default in the panel.

The tree view of the file manager should have the following root nodes:
+ Home Folder (or Persoal Files if that fits better)
+ Filesystem [Root]
+ Storage/Devices
  - removable media, etc...
+ Network
  - connected servers,...
+ Trash

In the first volume-handling mail you were asking what to do with burn:.
I'd like to see it in the Storage/Devices root as "New CD" or something
like that. The idea is that it's like a virtual device/disc. It can't be
connected to the cd device, as one can have multiple cd recorders or
perhaps one doesn't have any cd recorders but we want to create a .iso
file anyway.

BTW: ATM I'm absolutely not convinced by the spatial model. In general I
think the oo model is very nice on the desktop, but a file manager is
much more usable with a navigational system. I really don't see any
advantage, not even for a beginner. If you compare the spatial model
with the real world where each object has its own location and only this
seems logical to beginners, I can come up with an other comparison:
Imagine the Documents folder as a real ring binder. The subfolders are
just each an index divider. This corresponds the navigational model, but
only if the *tree view* is always visible.
What I want to say with this: Probably each approach can be more or less
correctly assigned to a real-world example and therefore we should
decide on usability/convenience.
It seems that I'm too late to influence something basic like this and as
long as I can easily force nautilus never to use the spatial model, it's
ok and therefore I just appended this comment as a BTW to this mail. I'm
anyway still interested in a strong argument for the spatial model
besides the beginner-argument (as I'm not sure about this).

I'm not an expert in things like that, I just try to bring you some
ideas what the best solution would be in my perspective.

I hope you've understood my points despite my English, else just ask. It
would be very nice if I could get a short feedback, even for things you
don't agree, so I know the reason my idea is not good.

Regards,

Jürg Billeter