ubuntu-tour team mailing list archive

[Alexander Lancey <alex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A tricky issue with removing "files and folders" is moving between filed
and fileless states.

Take an application like Rhythmbox. If you remove a file in Rhythmbox,
unless you specify so, it stays in your hard drive. One day while
browsing through ~/Music, you may notice a number of folder/files you
thought to be gone.

I've been bouncing between Unity and Gnome 3 for a few months now. The
Places system in Unity annoyed and confused me. I use the right-click
menu frequently enough to miss it, as I found I could not do any of the
actions it contained (except technically open). I've rarely used the
Places system, for a number of reasons. I like the concept of libraries
and having recent documents so accessible, but I don't like using two
file managers in parallel.

On Sun, 2010-11-14 at 01:55 +0100, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Hi Brena,
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 00:32, Brena Boba <brenaiboba@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> 
>         
>         
>          In a way this seems like a switch from one form of abstract
>         that is in use for years, little boring and repetitive but
>         gets the job done to another, more advanced with bigger
>         potential and bigger problems.
> 
> 
> Please understand, nobody will remove the file metaphor entirely,
> we'll just have something more appropriate on top of it, if we want
> to.
> You'll still have your cd, md, cp and mv, as much of it as you like
> and whenever you like!
> In a thread from June this year called "Symbolic Folders", Walter
> Wittel addressed most of your concern with these statements:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 04:35, Walter
> Wittel <wittelw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>         
>         However I don't agree that the hierarchal nature of current
>         file
>         systems should be totally hidden from users (or force them to
>         terminal
>         to do file management). Initially this should be a flat /
>         symbolic
>         view hosted in applications (and maybe a startup shell showing
>         only a
>         subset of home), and the user should be able to switch to a
>         hierarchal
>         view for browsing external media (or just if they want to).
>         We're
>         talking MVC here and this would be a great supplemental view
>         in the
>         file system "model".
>         
>  
> So to put it in his words:
> its "supplemental", not rivalling or substitutional.
>  
>         On the desktop side of things it gets more complicated and
>         because of that files and folders and "physical" management
>         appears somewhat easier than any tagging system that user
>         would have to learn first before using. Most people now about
>         making a folder and copying a file.
> 
> 
> As you imply yourself, creating and managing files and folders needs
> to be learned aswell. So what's the advantage now in learning a
> decades old method to designing an experience that will eventually be
> so intuitive that everyone can use it with little to zero learning
> required!?
> 
> 
> Think of our children, think of my great-grandma, who receives her
> first computer for Xmas 2010.. Ubuntu on it.
> Wouldn't you want them to have an easier interface to "filing" and
> "managing" content, something that deals with the name of a song,
> rather than with its filename? Something that allows labelling an
> object, rather than relying on filenames and foldernames as labels?
>  
>         Basically, it boils down to why I don't use players with music
>         library, despite knowing advantages, but ones with a "folder
>         view" option.
> 
> 
> Same here, +1, agreed!! I personally prefer pulling an album from
> Nautilus into Totem to fumbling along in Rhythmbox. Rhythmbox breaks
> my folder/file hierarchy and order totally. The advantage of seeing
> the contents of the .mp3 tags is drowned underneath all the
> shortcomings Rhythmbox still has today for my humble private self.
>  
>         Any tagging system that could take on desktop-wide file types,
>         organization, information and user scenarios would have to be,
>         in lack of a better word, bichin' :) Easier to let the user do
>         the hard work and we make a nice tracking system that can help
>         in presenting some of the information that is important in the
>         context of the work being done.
> 
> 
> i see u!
> That's where stuff should be going imo, and i'm sure we can all expect
> some great development there within the next few cycles, if we bring
> up this topic and inspire each other with excellent ideas.
> 
> 
> Read up on MVC here, if you're interested:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model–View–Controller
> 
> 
> greetz
> 
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