Improves Copy Dialog

[Leo Spalteholz]

On August 7, 2005 08:03 am, Christoph Weber wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I hope this is the right list for making suggestions for KDE.
>
> I would suggest a new feature for the file copy dialog. It is often the
> case that I need to copy several (or big) files from different
> directories to the same target.
> If the copying isn't done in one step, the files will be copied in
> parallel, thus slowing down the process. It would be an improvement, if
> it would be possible to drag and drop the next files to the file copy
> dialog and that they are added to a kind of "files to be copied"-queue.
>
> Little example:
>
> I want to copy movie files to /.../movies. So I start with
> /.../holidays/Italy.mpg. Then I also want to copy
> /.../birthdays/dad.mpg, now if I just drop the file to /.../movies the
> copying is very slow, because of the headmoving of the HDD. But with the
> suggested feature, one could easily drop the file to the copying dialog
> where it will be copied after finishing the first file.
> Otherwise I would have to wait with the copying until the first file is
> done.

I think that's an excellent idea, but I would implement it a little 
differently.  If I understand you correctly, your implementation only works 
if you're copying many files to the same directory from different places.  
But say you have this scenario:

copy /file1 to /home/me/
copy /usr/file2 to /home/me/stuff/
copy /mnt/data/file3 to /home/me/news

If you just drag file2 to the copy dialog, how do you tell it which directory 
to go in?

Maybe we could have an automatic file copy queue.  So that all concurrent 
copies on the hard disk would be queued up and executed in sequence 
automatically.  With a config setting to disable it perhaps :)
Then you don't have to worry about copying "differently" for adding files to 
the queue.  You just drag and drop like usual, and KDE handles it in an 
optimal way.

Cheers,
Leo