Konqueror delete unification

[Trian Karayiannis]

b.walter at free.fr wrote:

>>>Most users do not make a difference between "Move to Trash" and 
>>>"Delete". 
>>>      
>>>
>>yes, this is very true. the problem is real; the proposed solution is not. 
>>    
>>
> 
>
Having read all the discussions about deletion matters for the last few 
days, I thought I might contribute my two pennies.

I find myself *deleting* files (Shift+Delete) most of the time, instead 
of putting them to the trash can. I use trash only accidentally. I'm 
pretty sure most of you guys do the same. From what I see with novice 
users, they get an obsession with seeing the trashcan full. They also 
hate having to first "delete" (as in "put to trash") and then "delete" 
again (from the trash can, ie. physically). The only times I wish I had 
used "move to trash" was when I accidentally shift-deleted something.

You most usually realise such accidental deletions immediately, so one 
thing that can be done is remove the trash can in the traditional sense, 
and just have a single delete (and then a shred, but that's not the 
topic). The behaviour of that delete would be to put things in the 
"trash can" without confirmation, and the trash-bin could be emptied 
automatically on a daily (lets say) basis, or explicitly by the user. 
The frequency of the emptying could be a cofiguration option (novice 
users ==> slightly longer). In this scenario it would have to be renamed 
to "Recently Deleted Items" (RDI).

Another user made a very good point about how the first trash bin in 
MacOS (right?) was not highly regarded by HCI people. So it could have a 
single icon whether it is empty or not, to keep the user from making a 
habit (obsession?) of emptying it every 20 seconds. Let the cron task do 
the job. Power users can still empty it explicitly, and they (we) will 
hopefully get out of the habit of checking the RDI every so often, 
eventually, and start relying on the cron task.

The parent poster mentioned restoring files to their original location 
as well. First thing that springs to mind is a tar file with entries 
starting from the root directory. That will be a bit slow, so it's just 
a mind teaser. I'm not a unix guru, so I leave that to better educated 
people :-)

So, where do the confirmation dialogs come into play? They could be 
useful 1) when the file we're trying to put will make the total space of 
the RDI bigger than what we have allocated 2) similarly maybe when the 
amount of data is too big and it'll be too slow to put them in the RDI, 
or maybe 3) when we're replacing a file that already exists in the RDI.

Trian