Re: [Usability] New Nautilus File Exists Dialog

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Dan Zlotnikov wrote:

> 1) Displaying the changes in a thumbnail. This is not just for graphics,
> incidentally. Don't you just love the "file has been changed" error
> dialogue? What the devil have you changed in it again? Do you really want
> to keep those changes?
> A review window of these changes as compared to the existing file would be
> a Very Good Thing (tm).
> I realize that this is going to be non-trivial, since the computer would
> have to distinguish between significant changes (extra paragraph in the
> middle) and insignificant ones (the remaining text in the file is shifted
> lower due to the new paragraph being inserted). I've no suggestions at
> this time as to how to handle that.

[i can make suggestions but i dont think this is the best way to handle
it]

> 2) I object to the idea of automatic decision on whether the file should

I would not suggested anything like that, I hope you did not get that
impression from my earlier message.  I tried to keep my reply short, and
to deal with his question first before the problem he was trying to solve.

I definately dont want a duplicate interrupting the rest of the copy
operation, dont copy it at all or send it the end of the queue and ask me
when the others are done!

Keep in mind that the real speed bottleneck is usually waiting while
asking the user silly questions.  I do think there is an efficient
solution here.

Suggesting that a file is a duplicate purely based on its name is very
crude, the size really should be checked too and if they both match then
perhaps you could see if they both produce the same hash/checksum.
I expect a well choosen checksum would be far faster than any other
comparison method.
Adding an extra size/date check or something could be a relatively simple
improvement that could be made in the short term and leave more complex
changes until later.

Generally I would be happy to have a number -001 -002 appended to avoid
the name clash and in the case of images at least I would use GQView later
on to sort out which ones are duplicates (sweet feature, that Gthumb
doesnt have).

> Also, with the larger size of the dialogue window, a title inside the
> dialogue itself (instead of the title bar) would be more visible.

Many themes use the title bar, please avoid repeating the exact same thing
just for the sake of those that dont.  In any case the contents of message
box should be clear and meaningful one its own but that is a differnt
thing.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/