Re: [Utopia] [patch] improved hal support for gnome-vfs

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 15:27 -0400, Bryan Clark wrote:
> I saw this in action and I thought it looked pretty good.  A couple
> points I wanted to emphasize/agree with.
> 
> I think there should be only one icon per device attached, even if this
> a multi-drive device.  Having lots of different different drives for a
> single device seems a little crazy.  David tells me that this is kind of
> necessary because of random bad hardware devices in the wild.

If hardware didn't suck we wouldn't have to display drives at all.

>   This will
> be the first thing I change when I take over the world, well maybe not
> the first but it's high on the list.

Right, however this leads to a bunch of issues

 - First, what name and icon should we use for the "composite drive"?
 
 - Second, it kills the idea that the user can go to computer:/// to see
   what his (primary) storage devices are - I think this *may* be useful
   for users to discover that they actually have a drive that can do
   "Compact Flash", "Memory Stick" or at least that their media looks
   like the nice emblem on the drive [1] when/if we get nice icons.

 - Third; the number of icons in computer:/// changes when there is
   media resp. no media which may scare the user

[1] : The typical (physical) multi-card-reader drive is typically not
very helpful. At best it might say "CF", "MS/MS-PRO" on each resp. slot
but most don't say anything at all. It's just scary looking differently
sized slots. Btw, my brother actually written F:, G:, H: and I: above
each slot on his 4-slot 12in1 card reader because that's exactly how
usable Windows is :-)

> The drives should only show up in the "Computer" view from nautilus.
> Unless this is a drive without new media notification, i.e. a floppy/zip
> disk drive it shouldn't appear in the Desktop/Places/File Open dialog,
> only media should appear there. 

This sounds like we need a patch for the file chooser then.

>  I think it's fine to work under the
> assumption that the "Computer" view is just for people who need to look
> at their computer hardware for odd reasons.

Yea. However discovering what the drive can actually do is the only
thing I can think of here.

>   Assuming everything else is
> centered around real media, this seems like an appropriate place to show
> this kind of information.
> 
> The "Computer" view is going to get a little cluttered with all these
> removable drives showing up.  Perhaps some organization is going to be
> needed soon with this view...

Yea, this would be nice.

> Under duress,
> ~ Bryan

Do other HCI people pound raw meat?

    David