Re: [Utopia] gnome-vfs patch, take one

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 17:09, David Zeuthen wrote:
> It would be a change, yes. I'm happy to change it though, but I'm not
> sure how to do it in a good way.

I'd like that. There are a couple of reasons I like about having icons
for devices for removable media:
* We need it for some types of media. The trivial and most common
example is the floppy, but there is probably more. If we do it for
floppys its nice if we do the same for e.g. cdroms.
* It gives a location in the user interface where you can discover the
media-related hardware. And its stable, so when you mount it the volume
icon is in the same place as the cdrom was.
* We are exposing "unmount" to users, since they have to remember to
unmount e.g. a usb media before yanking it. This automatically gives you
the state "media in device, but not mounted", which makes it sensible to
expose the dual operation (mount) to be "complete". And mount requires a
device representation before the volume is mounted.

> My concern is just that there's simply no 1:1 relationship between the
> device and the volumes that may be on media you insert into the device. 

There should be a 1:n relation, and in most normal cases it'll be 1:1. I
think its ok if one cdrom drive icon turns into a few cdrom disc icons
when a multi-partition cdrom is mounted. This is not that confusing, and
its not the common case anyway.

> It gets even more fun when you look a multi-LUN devices like a 6in1 card
> reader. I have one those. The metal says "6in1 reader" and it exposes
> four LUN's (compact, SD-MMC, memory stick and smart media - obviously
> some marketing department thinks handling both CF type 1 and 2 should
> count as two or something). 

I have one of these. In windows it shows up as 4 drives. I don't think
thats such a horrible thing.

> Anyway, in this case what should computer:/// show? Two choices come to
> mind: either four icons (icons resemble the respective media) or one
> icon (icon looks like the device). What happens when I insert media with
> multiple volumes? 

I'm for four drive icons, and then each drive icon turns into one or
more volume icons when mounted.

> I also thought about a multi-level approach: 
> 
>  - 6in1 card reader
>   - compact flash
>   - smart media
>   - sd-mmc
>   - memory stick
> 
> with volumes popping in and out at the third level as appropriate.

I dunno. It'll complicate the UI and the APIs require changes. I think
this is a bit overengineered in practice, since normal people don't have
several 6in1 card readers and other stuff, so it won't be that crowded
anyway.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a lounge-singing dishevelled jungle king haunted by memories of 'Nam. 
She's a virginal antique-collecting journalist who hides her beauty behind a 
pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!