Julien Olivier schrieb:
I agree. I watched this in the past, too. However in companies it's mostly not possible to work with this mental model. In the beginning we had a network directory for Word and one for Excel and another for our CAD system. But a few years ago we changed to a project oriented file system structure. We were not sure, whether this would really be the best way, but now we see that it's the only possible solution here. Our old structure would have increased problems further on. So even our unexperienced users had to learn that all our data is stored on a special shared drive. And it works pretty well. At BMW where I worked as an electrical engineering intern they had a project oriented structure, too, that was quite deep as you can imagine. But it was could for team working and cross team working (integration).So we can see that there are really two ways to conceive data management: files are managed by the app itself (evolution model) or files are managed by the user (most office apps model). But users don't seem to actually see the difference between the 2 models and - at least on windows - most of them tend to think that everything works following Evolution's model (or Outlook in their case). That's why, like Walter said, some users manage their files directly from the file/save dialog, the same way that you organize your emails directly from Evolution and not by managing your mail folders in ~/.evolution.
I think this is a good idea because it helps unexperienced users to manage their data in a good way without thinking about it.For example, Rhythmbox should open/save files from/to ~/Music by default, Totem from/to ~/Videos, GIMP from/to ~/Pictures, OpenOffice from/to ~/Documents (not sure about the last one though because videosare documents too, aren't they ?) etc...
However, what I meant above is: Because there's more and more work everyone does with the computer and all gets more and more connected the application oriented mental model will lead into problems more and more. Thus it's time to support the user to get a different mental model from the beginning on. Since the user does not have any mental model about this topic in the beginning at all (I assume this. Does anyone know something different, like the desktop and folder model?), there is no need that a new user will get this mental model. It's just because of the history of DOS, Windows, ... But there's no need for it.
Thanks, Walter -- The signature of this email can be verified with the CA certificate of my university: Download: https://ldvra.ldv.ei.tum.de:442/pub/ Then "Get CA certificate"CA Fingerprint SHA1: 8E:EB:BF:39:9F:34:B8:6C:E2:61:E7:53:62:C9:C7:5F:46:B7:66:0C
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