unity-design team mailing list archive

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

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 15:53, Ronald McCollam <
ronald.mccollam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sun, 2011-02-13 at 15:20 +0100, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > the reason for me to reconsider this in the first place, is that
> > somebody would be unlikely to bookmark a location, knowing that it
> > would become physically unavailable soon.
> > I wouldn't bookmark a location, if i plan not to attach that
> > thumbdrive or external hdd again anytime soon.
>
> This would break my primary use case for bookmarks.  I don't bother
> bookmarking anything on my local system, as it's very easy to navigate
> to local resources.


There's a point!


> However, I do bookmark network file systems
> frequently, as it's a pain to type
>
> sftp://some.server.somewhere/long/path/to/the/files/that/I/want
>
> Clicking the bookmark opens a connection and FUSE mounts the remote
> filesystem automatically, saving me time and effort.
>

i wish FUSE would do that for a thumbdrive, an unmounted Windows partition
or an external HDD, that is usually connected or close to the computer.


>
> Perhaps this is an indication that networked external filesystems are
> different enough from local external filesystems (like thumb drives)
> that they should be treated differently, but I'm not sure without more
> thought.
>

actually, this is not about the device, location or resource. Bookmarking
something is like pinning it:
I want it to have a special status, i want it to be available before other
things.
And i want it to stay in my list, until i remove it from there (unpin).

Bookmarks for removable devices such as thumbdrives or say e.g. an internal
Windows partition are currently being hidden, whenever the location is
unavailable.
This is not good: i bookmarked the location, not only to always see it, but
to also remind myself of its existence among all the clutter.
So when i bookmark/pin something, it should always be visible (same goes for
Contact List / Empathy -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/667289 ).
ESPECIALLY when the resource is currently not available.

Empathy fixes this pin/unpin problem by making "Favourites" show, regardless
if they are online or offline.

What i would expect:
I bookmark a folder on my Windows partition, then i unmount that ntfs. The
bookmark remains, and when i click it the partition is mounted
automatically.

The same would ideally apply to thumbdrives, external HDDs, CDs and DVDs.
Since i pinned the folder, i either intend to keep the DVD in the drive, the
thumbdrive in the USB Port, the HDD in the eSATA port or IEEE1394 port or
USB port.
Or the SD Card in the Card Reader. The list goes on.

I think it is important to solve these conceptual problems around storage,
since working around these problems will continue causing regressions in
other areas of design, which wouldn't need to be.

Attempts at designing concepts of distributed databases or storage, as well
as non-local concepts of memory will all keep bashing against the conceptual
problem of accessibility posed by the current behaviour.