Re: [Usability] [RFC] Proposed AbiWord preferences dialog mockup

[Dom Lachowicz <domlachowicz yahoo com>]

Hi John,

> > save button (which you still have to do at some
> point
> > anyways if you want to persist your document).
> 
> Why ? It's the computer's job to do that (or it
> should be).

Maybe. Maybe not. It's not clear to me that it should
be effortless. If you view saving of documents as
filing them into cabinets/folders, then it's not
necessarily clear that this should always be
effortless. Filing is a deliberate and natural act
that most likely requires some intervention.
 
> > also not clear to me that the desired behavior
> should
> > happen at the application level
> 
> Certainly any implementation would be best done at a
> "system" level
> (inside the Gnome APIs somewhere).

Maybe. Maybe it should happen at a filesystem level or
hardware level (think "flash RAM"). I don't know the
correct solution. I just know that certain ones aren't
the right solution.

> > Often, saving is fundamentally equivalent to
> putting a
> > "seal of approval" on a particular revision of the
> > document. Once you write a letter, it stays
> written,
> > right? Unless you cumple up the letter and toss it
> in
> > the garbage - the equivalent of hitting the 'X'
> button
> > on the window bar. Otherwise it was just 'scratch
> > paper.'
> 
> And guess what - if I leave that scratch paper on my
> desk, it stays
> where it is when I leave the desk. It doesn't just
> vanish into the
> ether.

That's like leaving abiword up and running on your
desktop. You come back the next morning, the app is
still there, your data still intact, you sit down at
the keyboard and key some more in. They do call
computers "desktops" for a reason :)

> > Saving the file is fundamentally no different
> > than putting it inside of a file cabinet, folder,
> 
> Correct. However, with most applications, when you
> *don't* save, you
> lose it. Your example above illustrates the
> difference quite clearly: I
> have to make a positive action to get rid of a
> document. Not saving is
> the absence of an operation, not an operation. I
> disagree strongly that
> closing the window is equivalent in most user's
> minds to shredding a
> document.

This could also be a breakdown in the metaphor's we're
using. There isn't always a 1:1 mapping between
computer models and real world ones, nor should there
necessarily be. Most things should be "intuitive" and
"easy" for some definition of those words, and these
definitons should almost certainly take the mediums
they're operating on into account. Here, we're
disagreeing as to what "intuitive" and "easy" mean.

Closing the window is similar to putting down a pen.
Saving the document is like putting it in a well known
place where you will go back to find it again tomorrow
when you want to write again. Not saving a document,
even after being prompted to save your work, is like
saying "no, I really don't want my document,"
crumpling it up, and putting it in the garbage. There
are good reasons to crumple it up sometimes. You
didn't want to save it - you just wrote a quick
doc/note to send to the printer (tough it's now
"saved" in a more physical form). 

I don't think that 'not saving some temporary document
on permanent storage because the computer knows better
what to do than I do' should be a complex operation
either. It's not clear to me that any of these
operations should be effortless. What is clear is that
they should be intuitive and easy because in my mind,
there's a need for all these modes of operation.

So I suppose the question is which of these is
preferable:

1) "Are you sure that you don't want to save your
work? You'll lose all of your hard work!"
2) "Do you want to shred this work I've auto-saved for
you? Do you want to file it in any particular place
with any particular name?"

Maybe I'm being silly - applications do crash, cats do
chew through power plugs. But then again, sometimes
ink gets spilled all over your desk and the dog really
does eat your homework. I've always viewed this as an
argument for auto-save every N minutes, though, and
not implicit save.

In any event, I'm un CC'ing the AbiWord list. If you
feel the need to, reply to me directly.

Cheers,
Dom

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