unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93View%E2%80%93Controller>

greetz