Re: [Usability] Re: Spatial nautilus - fantastic - but what about the rest?

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 19:14, Markus Bertheau wrote:
> We should probably ask the usability people about that:
> 
> В Чтв, 13.05.2004, в 18:51, Tom Badran пишет:
> > On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 17:46 +0100, Martin Ebourne wrote:
> > > The save box that pops up when you 'File Save' has an icon which you
> > > drag. (An example in the URL I originally sent:
> > > http://www.ebourne.me.uk/bits/gnome/saveas.png)
> > 
> > The problem is of course that you  have to do a File->Save first, so the
> > action doesnt mirror that of dragging a file to open (you dont do
> > File->Open then drag it to a box). 
> > 
> > Admiteddly i cant think of anything better, i just 'feel' that there is
> > going to be a really good and obvious way of doing it.
> > 
> > Tom

I think that a "really good and obvious way" is to simply not "save" a
document after creating it with an application first, but create it
directly in the file manager ("create new document") and then only edit
it with an application. This avoids a lot of problems, feels more
efficient (to me) and is a lot more in line with the object metaphor.
Big downside is, that it doesn't work that well without a file
manager...

Obviously this will open some interesting technical challenges, but
nothing that seems unresolvable for me. For one thing, there still has
to be a way to "export" a document to something else, for example to get
a PNG image from an SVG document.

It would also require much more sophisticated "create new document"
functionality inside of Nautilus (=the Desktop). 

While this might be too radical of a change, it seems to me that it
would be easy to provide a smooth transition path by improving this kind
of usage for all document editing applications, while still providing
the "traditional" way to launch the application first and then use the
save as dialog.

Notice that the above is not just theoretical rambling, as it's already
possible to work this way using simple text files and I have been doing
this for quite a while now. I just wish it would be better supported and
possible with more sophisticated types of documents.