[Usability] Re: FileChooser's path bar and re-rooting

[Bryan Clark <clarkbw clarkson edu>]

from gtk-devel-list: moving this part to the usability list...

On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 19:49 -0500, Ross McFarland wrote:
[snip]
> personally i think hiding the location of the home directory on a unix
> system is a bad idea. the home directory is a central enough
> location/concept that on unix a user needs to know where it is. if they
> want something from a co-worker's home directory and they know where
> their home directory is located they'll have a pretty good shot at
> guessing where to find the other.
[/snip]

This brings up a good point, however I would classify that situation as
an edge case scenario.  Going to /home to get to someone else's home
directory for shared files is a flaw in the interaction design of the
system. 

The reason this is a flaw is because file system directories and
locations are arbitrary information.  If the concept of a /home
directory was so critical to the design of an OS then all OS's would use
that.  Every OS has an idea of a $HOME directory where the users files
reside, but they all use a different directory structure to describe
that location.  This kind of arbitrary information shouldn't be required
knowledge for using a computer.  It would be like asking all drivers to
know how to change their oil in order to drive; many do know how to do
that, but it's not part of the driving experience so why make it
required knowledge?

The fundamental idea is that people don't have to know directory
structure information to share files. Current computer systems have
required them to know that kind of stuff in order to do it, but
hopefully we're changing that.  The goal from an interaction perspective
would be that if you needed files from a co-worker you would just need
to know that co-workers name and that's how you would navigate to their
shared files.

~ Bryan