Re: volumes mark 2

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 17:35, Paolo Borelli wrote:
> What about instead creating these folders in the homedir and put by
> default .desktop files (or symlinks?) on the desktop?
> 
> What I mean is:
> 
> ~/Desktop
> 
> and
> 
> ~/Documents
> ~/Images
> etc

Ugh, we just got rid of .desktop links from the desktop because of all
the problems they created.

> On the Desktop you would see "Documents", "Images", etc and instead you
> would _not_ have "User's Home".
> 
> IMHO this way you would reach your goals while  having the following
> advantages:
> 
> * no home-Desktop loop

Instead you would have total confusion about what directory is stored
where, and where directories appear if you create them. This sounds like
the worst sort of thing you could do to the mental model people will
create. Either we expose the homedir as a concept, or we try to avoid
using it by default. Thats the only two sane choices. (Well, the third
would be make them the same.)

> * still preserving the unix concept of homedir (not-gnome apps and the
> shell would simply see ~/documents etc)

It really wouldn't. It only exposes part of the unix homedir concept,
further confusing things. If some app downloads a file to ~/ it will
"disappear" in the minds of the user, since there is no easy way to find
it.

> * not exposing to the user the fact that Desktop is directory; this is
> IMHO quite important, since users think of the desktop as a special
> place not as a root for a hierachy. In other words in the file selector
> Desktop would be one of the roots (maybe the default one), but would not
> have subfolders.

What if the user creates a directory, then there randomly is some
subfolders in desktop. And generally the user *is* supposed to create
folders there, how else would you keep the desktop organized.

Also, all this totally breaks down with 3rd party apps, since they then
randomly shows the desktop directory in $home.

> IIRC this is also pretty much the way Windows works:
> each user has his part of the filesystem (equivalent to home) which
> contains, among other things Desktop and Documents.

Of course this is the way unix will implement it too. The question is
how we best expose this in the user interface.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an oversexed albino paranormal investigator moving from town to town, 
helping folk in trouble. She's a vivacious renegade mermaid with an MBA from 
Harvard. They fight crime!