[Usability] moving or copying when drag'n'dropping

["Matthew Nuzum" <newz bearfruit org>]

Hello, I'm paranoid about dragging files, because I never know what to
expect. For example:

I just drug files from an archive in whatever program Gnome uses onto
a network place. The dialog said "moving files..." which worried me.
Fortunately, it only copied them.

Sometimes when I drag and drop files from the desktop it moves them.
For example, dragging an item to the trash, which makes sense, but it
seems like other times this happens too. I'm not sure what the pattern
is.

Often times it copies them. For example, copying files from my desktop
to network places.

To further frustrate things, while it seems the common procedure for
dragging is to copy, in Rhythmbox, it instead duplicates listings
without duplicating files. This can be quite frustrating if you then
try to delete the duplicate entries and instead completely trash your
music files. The original entries are still present, but won't play
because the music files are gone.

Things could be better if there is:
a: standardization on what happens when you drag'n'drop
b: communication or indication of what is going to happen when you
drop (i.e. Windows shows an emblem indicating if the operation will
copy, move or create a shortcut)
c: a standard and intuitive way to affect the default drag'n'drop action.

I'd also like to be able to control wither or not files get moved or
copied. In XP you can drag with the right mouse button, and when
dropping, get a choice to move, copy or create a shortcut. This suits
me just fine, because the computer rarely knows what my intentions
are. (i.e. duplicating an image file, moving files to a network share)

--
Matthew Nuzum
www.bearfruit.org
newz2000 on freenode