Re: [Usability] The new file chooser

[<john erling blad aftenposten no>]

> Samuel Abels Says
> I do not know whether and where such a discussion might have taken
> place, but when it comes to ask the question whether or not there
should
> be a new widget, I think we should always try and ask the question why
> we need it rather then why we don't. More widgets = more clutter. This
> is not to say that sometimes a bit more clutter is required.

I have no idea how much more cluttered thing might be (mumble) but there
Times when a filename clearly *is* necessary.

>> in fact, serialized filenames are not a uncommon thing. on the office
>> desktop. in print production, in audio production, in allmost
anything

> Please be more specific.

On one specific server there are catalog structures consisting of
something
like /publisher/year/month/day/page/article.type
To traverse such a structure plainly though point and click is tiresome.

Now, this kind of structure is *very* common on servers storing data in
hierarchies. You use the catalog structure as a basic look up into a
more
complete description of some kind. This could be embedded as tags in a
mp3 file or a xml file.

Note that the existence of the tags aren't interesting here, it is the
existence of a catalog structure to support this structure.

Now, such structures could contain hundreds or even thousands of
entries.
XFS for example is very efficient when the number of entries in a
catalog is very large.

So what you (I.. :) would like is something where you could write a more
or less specific query. Lets say you write a date specification inside a
catalog, then the file chooser would attempt to rewrite this to match
other
dates used in this catalog. But clearly, a file chooser have to be a lot
more intelligent than this. Which leads to some sort of search
capabilities.

Now, if you open a file in serialized fashion, then you want *one*
application opening one by one of a number of files. Often this is
because you want to do a few small steps with the file and then store it
back. In other words, if you want to serialize you will also need some
sort of macro scripting facility. Still, this is often the case but not
always.

Serialization is a well known technique in control and command types of
applications. It is also well known from archive retrieval applications
where you set some parameters and traverse through a set of hits.

John