[Rhythmbox-devel] Useful "Delete file from disk" missing

["Grzegorz B. Prokopski" <gadek debian org>]

Hi guys,

I, as some others (see below), would want to be able to delete a file from
disk permanently using Rhythmbox.  I found this issue mentioned in:

* http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2005-August/msg00116.html
* http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128408

Some snippets for the lazy ones ;-)

"Rhythmbox is described as an 'iTunes clone' in the bugzilla interface. When
 pressing delete in iTune, a dialog box asks if the user wants to delete the
 file itself as well as the database entry."

"I do not need -- or want -- Rhythmbox to actually delete my files. I have
 nautilus and xterm to handle those things for me.  The fact that iTunes
 *can* delete files is more of a design flaw than anything, IMO."


While I fully agree with the "Rhythmbox is not a file manager" principle I
also believe there's a strong case for allowing user to *delete* files
physically from disk via Rhythmbox.  The problem is that the filenames of mp3
files insufficiently describe their content.  You often get a few files
containing the same song, but filename of one of them starts with a number,
second one with album name, and third one with the song title.  You'd need to
actually have a file manager capable of reading ID3 tags to help you sort via
tags' content.  But it gets worse, as many songs have wrong/empty/useless ID3
data, so the ultimate way of deciding whether a song is to be kept or not is
to play it.

Now, we all know we technically could use XMMS or Rhythmbox to get the
(usully long/complicated) path and filename of each file we want to remove
from disk.  It's a few clicks per file.  But doing it for many files turns
out to be truly tedious (I tried that).

Coming back to Apple for a second.  I am not claiming we should copy Apple's
designs blindly.  But most people tend to agree that usability and
userfriendliness of their software is state of the art.  This *does* come
from close cooperation with test groups of consumers, observing their needs,
common patterns, etc.  Now, in the Free Software world we don't really have
all that (usually), but OTOH we do have other communication channels,
like... mailing lists.

Best regards,

			Grzegorz B. Prokopski

PS: Please Cc: me if possible, I am not on the ML.

-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski      <gadek debian org>
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