Making new folder in kmail?

[Duncan]

gene heskett posted on Mon, 09 May 2011 09:44:34 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Monday, May 09, 2011 09:09:21 AM Duncan did opine:
> 
>> gene heskett posted on Sun, 08 May 2011 23:56:13 -0400 as excerpted:
>> > The important thing is that I did get it done before I get active on
>> > that list.  And I still don't know what I did differently this time.
>> > One of those things that make you go hmmmm I guess. :)
>> 
>> Maybe you used the context menu this time?  Because as I said, it works
>> from the context menu, but as you reported, select local folders and
>> try to create a new subfolder from the main menu, and the option is
>> grayed out, here as well.
> 
> Define 'context menu' please, Duncan.  Maybe I used a different sequence
> the last time when it worked, much to my surprise?

The menu that appears when you click the (normally) right mouse button on 
an item.  Since pointing device layouts change, from left-handers often 
simply reversing the buttons so what's normally the right button is the 
left, to devices with many buttons that Linux lets you configure any way 
you want, I often use the term "context-click" when referring to what's 
normally the right button click, since it so often raises a context-
sensitive menu.

It just seems more intuitive to me (since many GUIs have worked this way 
for over a decade and a half now, and it has become second nature for me) 
to context-click the folder I want to create a new subfolder in, and 
select that option, than to click (or keyboard navigate to) the desired 
parent folder, move my focus somewhere else entirely (the main menu at the 
top of the window... or the top of the screen in some layouts!), select 
the correct main menu, then the correct item from that menu.

So when I'm operating in a GUI, I'd guess it's much more common that I use 
the context menu "new folder/directory" item, than the main menu item.  
I'd guess that's true of the kmail devs as well, or they'd have likely 
spotted that bug.

OTOH, in a "semi-gui" like mc, the usual function key becomes my primary 
means of doing so.  And of course at the CLI, mkdir works, but I probably 
don't use that as often as I might, because if it's a filesystem, I'm 
normally using mc, and then of course there's the mailers and the rss feed 
"akregator" and similar, where "folder" is indeed the correct term, since 
it's not necessarily a (file-system) directory one's creating at all.

> One thing is for sure, if the help files contained more howto's it would
> qualify as help, whereas it seems they are drifting off toward an
> abbreviated feature listing all over linux, not just kde.  So I am not
> pointing a specific finger at a specific target, but making a general
> complaint.  If the operation the user wants to do is not 100% intuitive
> (that should be the target to code to anyway), then explain it in the
> help!

Well, to many, the context-click menu /is/ now intuitive.  Certainly it's 
common enough on MS, and the major Linux GUIs operate similarly by default.

So there's a legitimate question of "what's intuitive"?

> I have heard it said many times that the coder shouldn't do Docs,

Back on MSWOrmOS 98, I got so frustrated with the "no-help" system that 
when I got a chance to change the name on the menu, using a third party app 
that tweaked the necessary string in the binary, I switched it to simply 
"N". (Since it was effectively hex-editing the binary, the string normally 
couldn't be /longer/ than the original, only the same length or shorter.  
And I converted all the top-level start-menu entries to single-letter.  
I'd have actually removed the help menu entry entirely if I could have, as 
there were other ways to access it and it really /was/ so bad it was 
generally "no-help".)

So it's definitely not FLOSS (free/libre and open source software) only 
that has this sort of issues.

But it /has/ been argued that this is one of the major negatives of 
FLOSS.  Few developers /want/ to write documentation.  They'd rather be 
coding up the next great feature, or even hunting down that last stupid 
bug.  And the users... either don't know enough to write the docs or once 
they do, tend to be no longer interested since their own itch has now been 
scratched.

At least with pay-big-money-or-you-can't-legally-run-it software, there's 
money available to pay someone to create the documentation, but FLOSS 
doesn't generally have that since most are volunteers and the companies 
sponsoring those that aren't generally know how the existing program works 
(or they'd not be sponsoring it) and want the new features as well.

OTOH, the pressure over the years for the big-money folks has been to 
monetize what they /can/ monetize, and as soon as it became clear that 
people would pay good money for good documentation, their built-in 
documentation began to suffer as well, as it became the bare minimum 
necessary to get people functional enough to be interested in paying MORE 
money for the /real/ documentation.

And the FLOSS folks /usually/ cover at /least/ that at some point, and 
fortunately there's great book publishers like O'Reilly publishing books 
for both FLOSS and servantware, so the documentation gap between the two 
tends to be narrow-to-non-existent despite the theoretical advantage paid-
or-you-can't-legally-run software has in this regard.

> In the meantime I have about 30 more identical sticks to carve tenons on
> the ends of with my cnc milling machine before it gets too wet (its in
> the forecast anyway) to carry wood back and forth between a wood storage
> building, my shop building and the garage/shop. [...]

> I suspect it will keep me out of the bars for 2 or 3 months. ;-)

Sounds like it. =:^)

Thanks for the "real life" glimpses.  Strictly speaking, they're not on 
topic, but knowing little bits like that about someone tends to make them 
much more "human", and thus easier to relate to.

In that line... the last few weeks at work here have been slow.  I'm 
catching up on all the computer stuff I had put off (perhaps you've seen 
my replies to the few months-old posts I still had marked to reply to...) 
but my wallet is seeing some stress... 

Temps here in Phoenix are running about 100F/38C highs, now.  Starting to 
get hot, but not what I term "ovenating" yet.  ("Ovenating" is when the 
heat hits you like a blast from a hot oven, rolling off of everything, the 
sidewalk, the pole you might try to step in the shadow of at the cross-
walk to get a bit of shade while waiting for the light -- but don't THINK 
about actually leaning against it, the hot metal BURNS, the cars, the 
sides of buildings, heat's coming from everywhere without relief, except 
from the A/C.  Even the water out of the faucet is warm-to-hot, so one 
can't even take a cold shower!)  We'll be there in a month or so, when 
highs tend to reach 110F/43C up.  The Phoenix record is 122F/50C, in the 
shade, at the airport where there's space for the breeze to blow, altho 
once it hits 43C or so, the breeze doesn't cool off any more, just makes 
you hotter, too.  Obviously, in the city with the sun beating down on 
concrete walls and sidewalks and asphalt roads and parking lots, the "real-
feel" is 50C/122F far more often, even if the official temps are only 
117F/47C.

A few years ago a heatwave swept Europe.  People were dying.  Then I 
looked at the actual temperatures -- 35C, not even 100F!  At one point we 
had lower temps than normal and there was a bit of panic as to whether 
Phoenix was going to lose its reputation if it hadn't hit 100F by Memorial 
day (last Monday in May).  35C is not DYING weather, it's not even 
officially SUMMER weather, yet!  Not in Phoenix, anyway!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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