[Usability] Re: Interacting with open folders

[Daniel F Moisset <dmoisset arnet com ar>]

On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 14:52 +0100, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> Hello there,
> 
>    I have always wondered why, in order to act upon a folder F, I must
>    be viewing not F, but its *parent*.
> 
>    Example: Suppose I have a nautilus window displaying folder
>    /foo/bar. In order to delete "bar", I have to go to the *parent*
>    folder (foo).
> 
>    This seems illogical to me.  And the problem is even more apparent
>    with spatial nautilus: here, a window and a folder are strongly
>    identified, so I should be able to act on a folder when I am viewing
>    its window.
> 

It doesn't seem *so* illogical* to me. The structure of container/items
is ubiquitous in the desktop, and usually containers are shown in
windows which allow operating on its items (not the container).

For example, an OO.o document is a container of text. I open it (a
window is shown with the text), and every feature in the window is for
manipulating the text itself, not the document. if I want to delete an
OO document, I do it from it's container windows (that might be a
Nautilus window showing folder "Documents").

The same happens with gedit, gimp... any document based application in
gnome.

I'm not saying your idea is a bad idea. I'm saying that the way Nautilus
works now is consistent with the rest of the desktop. If you make a
proposal to change nautilus, every other gnome app should change
accordingly.

Cheers,

	Daniel

PS: Sorry for breaking thread, Evolution is not a able to take digests
apart

-- 
Must it be assumed that because we are engineers beauty is not our concern,
and that while we make our constructions robust and durable we do not also
strive to make them elegant?
Is it not true that the genuine conditions of strength always comply
with the secret conditions of harmony?
    -- Gustave Eiffel, 1887