[RFC] One ioslave to rule them all...

[Thomas Zander]

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On Tuesday 26 June 2005, Kévin Ottens wrote:
> I'm now almost able to do it, in fact if I could even do it now. Some
> of you may wonder "why hiding the unixian file hierarchy??? and push
> use of system:/???".
> The answer is simply that for a desktop user this unix file hierarchy
> is an implementation detail.

I agree that the unixian file hierarchy is not the best way to work for 
many people and with searching and other ways to find locate it can 
indeed be used less.
But please remember that all of us currently depend on our files/subdirs 
under our homedirs and all that stuff unixian _inside_ the homedir 
itself.
That should never be removed, only deprecated.

> So, the current status of what I've done is exactly this : if you start
> browsing using system:/ you can stay in this virtual hierarchy and do
> all your daily work using it (as a desktop user, not a sysadmin).

Wait;
you are actually making the exact same mistake you are trying to replace, 
if I understand your statements here correctly.
Kio-system: itself is an implementation (detail) forcing the user to 
browse that means you just replaced one forced hierarchy with another.
While you may have a better default or whatever; this is ultimately not 
the way to go.  I have no problem with a system kio slave at all; but the 
user should never see the URLs that are used to access it.  For my 
convenience I'll point to searching again as a smarter way to access 
this.  There may be others, naturally.

> So the user could use only this, but some entry point to the unix
> filesystem still remain, in particular the shortcuts to the home
> directory...
>
> Where I'd like to go is the following : replace $HOME with home:/$USER
> everywhere, this way the user will be "on the right track" by default
> (in the system:/ hierarchy).

I would love to see kio-home implement all sorts of paths that make 
navigation easier by hiding implementation of (for example) search.
I have a huge problem with it becoming visible for the user in any way at 
all.
As soon as a gui exists that facilitates searching, which uses kio-slaves 
as a back-end, this is something that I feel we can introduce to our 
users.  Not a non-intuitive url which just force the user to learn one 
more thing.

Please keep up your great work, I like at least some of the ideas you 
pose!
- -- 
Thomas Zander
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