Re: The perfect file manager

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jun 29, 2008, at 4:26 PM, Dylan McCall wrote:
> ...
> [2] I mention this, because I have encountered a Windows user who
> utilized the File -> Open dialog in a particular program for his 
> generic file management tasks. That truly sent a chill down my spine.
> Thankfully, our File Open dialog stays completely in scope, but this 
> did get me pondering something. Any program that manipulates a file 
> has a Save As button which often works very much like Copy would in a 
> file
> manager. Why such a different movement? Why are there two different
> operations doing the same thing? Why does one feel rather direct (as in
> Copy & Paste or DnD), whereas the other is more like punching a command
> into a terminal (save to /home/me/documents/thisthing/draftb)?
> ...

The reason is, I guess, that the Apple Lisa was too expensive to become 
popular.

Therefore, Apple knew they had to make the Macintosh cheaper than the 
Lisa.

Therefore, the first Macs had only 128 KB of RAM.

Therefore, they didn't support running multiple applications at once.

Therefore, they couldn't run the file manager at the same time as 
another application.

Therefore, Mac applications -- unlike Lisa applications -- had to 
provide their own "New", "Open...", and "Save As..." items in their 
"File" menu, using file dialogs instead of the file manager.

Therefore, all operating environments that came afterward, including 
Gnome, copied this design without rethinking it.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/


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