Re: volumes mark 2

["Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)" <rudd-o amautacorp com>]

I think that the opposite is true.  The documents folder should go in ~/
because that's whoere most apps default, you don't have to do anything
extra and hence introduce less software defects by "cwd ~/Desktop"
hacks.

It all depends on what your concept of desktop is.  

I very much prefer that everyone used symlinks everywhere instead of
.desktop files.  you can't drag files to .desktop shortcuts to folders.


El sáb, 20 de 09 de 2003 a las 02:46, David Adam Bordoley escribió:
> Paolo Borelli writes: 
> 
> > 
> > I was not arguing about the implementation, if .desktop files are not
> > the right approach, let's use symlinks or in-memory objects or
> > whatever... I was just saying that these folders should be easyly
> > accesible from the desktop, but they should not physycally be into the
> > desktop exposing the detail that the desktop is a folder.
> 
> Its better to keep it simple in my opinion. Users are undoubtably going to 
> unfortunately be exposed to the fact that the desktop is a folder via 
> fileselectors in other apps (eek fileselectors). If the document folders are 
> contained in the desktop folder, they will at least be able to make the 
> association of "Documents" folder is on the Desktop I'll look there. THe 
> other way just leads to confusion. Where is my "Documents" Folder. It 
> appears on the desktop but really isnt? Huh? Better to keep the mental 
> associations easy. What you are proposing really only helps a small minority 
> of users and hurts the majority.
> >  
> > 
> 
> > 
> > I don't really see why going up one level and being in $home would be
> > confusing: you would see a _normal_ folder containing a list of dirs
> > like "Documents", "Images" etc. I think that's way less confusing than
> > special casing stuff like disabling the "Open parent folder" or going in
> > a special dir called Desktop (as I said above most of the users don't
> > think of Desktop as a folder).
> 
> Your missing the point. By using the spacial metaphor, you are communicating 
> to the user that the desktop is the computer (root to use unix terms). Its 
> the starting point/home whatever. We need to avoid breaking this as much as 
> possible. Once the desktop folder is firmly associated as the users 
> workspace there will be little reason for users to be exposed to the actual 
> home folder at all. 
> 
> > 
> > Creating Documents and putting a link to it on the desktop while not
> > putting a link to home is just a nice way to convince the casual user to
> > keep his files organized in subfolders and do not mess much with home. 
> > 
> 
> Puttin the actual folder on the desktop is even better. It avoids all the 
> hacks that would be needed to make it convincing and it keeps implementation 
> even easier. 
> 
> 
> > 
> > Everithing can be solved... this does not mean that we should not pick
> > the right way of doing things.
> > Unix has a clean and simple place where users manage their stuff and it
> > is $home. Windows doesnt, so they have invented "My Documents" which is
> > poor-man equivalent to $home.
> 
> Well I used to use that argument to justify using $home as the desktop (in a 
> perfect world). However too much cruft ends up there. Its better from an 
> interface standpoint to say $home is where apps do their user book keeping, 
> ~/Desktop is user workspace. To the majority of users it will never matter, 
> to the minority, well they can always put a link to $home on their desktop 
> or use $home as their desktop. 
> 
>  
> 
> > I have the impression that instead of doing the right thing and help
> > users to better organize their stuff in Home we are creating a copy of
> > the copy, hoping that hiding stuff would make things better.
> 
> Its not a perfect solution, but given the constraints its the best of the 
> available options. As I said in a perfect world $home might actually be the 
> desktop. 
> 
> dave 
>