Re: [Usability] Content Separation in GNOME

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Ivan Gyurdiev wrote:
>...
> I like the division into Settings/Documents/Downloads as a start.
> I suggested the lowercase names, because that's consistent w/ existing
> Unix conventions. People who access those things from the shell might
> be annoyed at uppercase and verbose names,

Most humans don't access things from shells, but for those of us who do,
echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc works quite well.

> such as the ones used on Windows.

Capitalized labels were used in Risc OS before they were used in
Windows, and in AmigaDOS before that, and in Mac OS before that, and in
centuries of real-world filing systems before that. It's a human
convention, not a Windows one.

> The Settings folder can be avoided for now if the documents are
> moved - I ask for separation of content and settings, and if you move
> the content there's no need to move the settings.

True, but then you have the problem that there's no good name for
"everything except settings". (I'm guessing this is just as true in
other languages as it is in English.) "Content" is used by Web
programmers and media executives, but by few other people. And
"Documents" has the problem mentioned by Rodney Dawes: people don't
generally consider music, video, saved games, etc to be "documents".
(Mac OS Classic used "Documents" to cover all of those, but only as a
suggestion, and perhaps because documents *were* the the only things in
that folder in the mid-1980s. In Mac OS X, "Music", "Pictures" and so on
are alongside "Documents", not inside it.)

>...
>>The Settings folder could work like this: Programs would be allowed to
>>read from anywhere in ~/Settings (to access settings shared between
>>programs, or to import settings from competing programs), 
>  
> I don't like this. This should be done per-program in the program's
> policy if it's really necessary.

How would such a policy be established? Do you mean that the first time
you run Firefox, for example, you should get a confirmation alert
"Firefox is trying to read your Epiphany settings", and another alert
"Firefox is trying to read your Gnome-wide bookmarks", and another alert
"Firefox is trying to read your Gnome-wide cookies", and another alert
"Firefox is trying to read your Gnome Keyring", and so on? What are you
trying to protect against here, anyway?

>>(Nautilus -- or a program Nautilus delegated to -- could present the
>>~/Settings folder by default as an integrated control panel for Gnome
>>settings and application-specific settings. Double-clicking an
>>application's subfolder would ideally launch that application with a
>>command to show its preferences window and nothing else.
> 
> That's interesting. In that case the Settings folder might prove useful
> - at that point settings are no longer to be hidden away from the user.

Exactly. Making a scary system non-scary is better than covering it up.

>>Instead, the Downloads folder could work like this: Nautilus wouldn't
>>let you open a file directly from the folder, but the folder window
>>would have a panel along the top saying "To open a file you trust, move
>>it out of this folder first." (This is comparable to the Trash in Mac OS
>>and the Recycle Bin in Windows: if you want to open a file in either of
>>those, you have to take it out first.) This would make elevating a
>>file's trustedness a deliberate action, without using an alert. If you
>>had a virus scanner installed, it would automatically be called on to
>>scan a file whenever it was moved or copied out of ~/Downloads.
> 
> ....but that's so annoying. If you had a virus scanner there should be a
> way to trigger automatic scan and relabel without going through so much
> trouble. 

I only suggested moving as an alternative to a confirmation alert, which
would be both more annoying and less effective. In cases where a virus
scanner would obviate an alert, it should similarly obviate the moving.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/