Re: Actions to take when copying/moving duplicate files

[hirumono email it]

	--------- Original Message --------
	Da: Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
	To: 
	        Cc: Ritesh Khadgaray <khadgaray gmail com>, nautilus-list gnome org
	Oggetto: Re: Actions to take when copying/moving duplicate files
	Data: 25/01/07 19:12
	
	> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 10:03 +0100, hirumono email it wrote:
> 
> > Oh yes, a way to set a split view would be fantastic! It might look too
> > "old-fashioned" for newbie users, but it allows for such a clear vision
of
> > source and destination locations that the Explorer-view will never
grant!
> 
> Apart from the initial setup required, is it really any better than
> putting two windows beside each other?  If so, why?  (Genuinely trying
> to see if we're missing a usability trick here...)
> 
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
> 
> -- 
> CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
> mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
> http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771
> 
> Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

I totally agree with Mr. Lundén and would like to add that a split-view
window is an "environment" in itself which can be moved, put on another
desktop, resized, ivconified while copying/moving etc. without the hassle of
cluttering the desktop with too many objects. Two windows have to be moved
and resized in sync, losing the history whenever a window is closed by
mistake. Moreover, I find a single window with an array of operation buttons
to be much simpler than two Explorer-like windows with "copy-paste" with all
the focus problems, or, even worse, drag-n-drop, which I think can be more
dangerous than useful. Has anyone ever "lost" a dir after moving it by
mistake into the next one in the tree? :) 
About the cons: split-view file management is something coming from the
earliest days of computing as we know it, and two panes looking at the user
(with a congruous toolbar rich of functions!) might scare a newbie who would
maybe feel more at ease with a minimalistic interface full of big icons,
especially someone coming from Windows. But once he gets more acquainted
with the system and feels the need to do a more complicated work, this
layout shows all its limits. How can you sync two dirs in single-window
mode? How can you check them for their sizes? (In an old-school file manager
you would select the dirs and use a "get sizes" command to see how much a
single dir weighs, instead of a single "properties" sheet for all. Of course
you could ask for "properties" for every single dir, but when you have
hundreds of them...)
About the simpler way to select files Mr. Lundén was talking about, I think
the best would be a "commander-mode", which allows for selection of
non-contiguous files with a mouse click or keypress (I couldn't find in
Nautilus the option to select groups of non-contiguous files, i.e. in
Explorer you would click and shift-click for the first group, then
ctrl-click and ctrl-shift click for the second one; but in Nautilus this
doesn't work). In this mode a selection lasts until it's removed by the user
(or the command has been executed, of course), allowing to e.g. select a
file to be copied, double-click on another file to see its contents, extend
the selection and go on. 
Of course, some of these features could get implemented in a single-window
environment too, but I find that in two panes they show all their power.
It's about a sense of full control of what you're doing. 
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