File drop popup menu removal

[David Faure]

On Monday 06 September 2004 12:44, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> David Faure wrote:
> 
> >The other option is to stat the source directory before showing the popup,
> >but that's too slow.
> >
> I suppose Konq has an internal list of all its views, they could all 
> cary cached stat() info. Rather than stat()ing the source dir, we could 
> simply look that info up. It would work only for drops from konq, but 
> that's good enough IMHO.

True, KDirListerCache has the information, *iff* you're dropping between
windows that are in the same process. So it won't work when you ask for
your konqueror windows to be different processes, or when dropping onto
the desktop...

> >>A simple rule could be to copy when dropping to a different  
> >>filesystem, move otherwise.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >You mean not showing the popup, too, then?
> >  
> >
> At least show it only where there's actually something to choose from, 
> and even then default to the likeliest choice.

There's always the possibility to create a Link (since we create a .desktop file
for remote urls) in addition to Copy. So this doesn't create cases where the menu
could be hidden.

> >I hate this semi-clever behavior in Windows.
> >Any program which tries to guess what the user wants is bound to fail.
> >  
> >
> Yes, but that program will be annoying only when it's wrong, and that 
> can seldom happen. 

"Seldom data loss" is not an acceptable solution, even with "seldom" in it.

> On the other hand a program which always asks for an  
> obvious answer is always annoying :-).

Less than an inconsistent program. And the answer is rarely obvious.
Even I don't know if I want to copy or move until the popup asks me,
so how could the computer know what I don't even know myself yet? :)

And when I do know, I use Ctrl or Shift.

> >And any program which modifies its behavior based on something that
> >is more or less hidden to the user (isn't the whole idea of mountpoints
> >to *hide* the filesystem separations?) is bad behavior.
> >  
> >
> Yes, but to most users the very idea of mounting a floppy or any 
> removeable media for that matter is completely alien. On the contrary, 
> what we generally want to hide is the mount itself (e.g. supermount) not 
> the fact that the floppy can be seen as a filesystem just like their 
> home dir.

But it's all one hierarchy. The fact dropping to /mnt/floppy copies might
be obvious, but why should dropping to /tmp or /usr or any dir that's a link
to /mnt/something lead to a different behavior than dropping into $HOME/tmp
or whereever else in the same partition? The partition boundaries are not 
apparent to the user at all (unlike Windows' partition letters).

PS: I don't think it makes sense to have again a discussion that was
already held on kde-usability, when the maintainer agrees with the
outcome of that discussion :)

Beginner users get asked, power users use the modifiers, everyone's happy.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).