Konqueror delete unification

[Malte Starostik]

On Tuesday 15 July 2003 09:29, Trian Karayiannis wrote:
> 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).

[snip]

I like the idea of an RDI instead of the traditional trashcan. This is where 
the Trash IO Slave would come into play I'd say. Instead of emptying the RDI 
trash it could also just throw out items prioritised by file size and 
"deletion" date. While this opens the door for a whole lot of nice things to 
implement, all of that concerns the trash implementation again, not the 
delete vs. trash UI (although an "intelligent" enough RDI could almost always 
be used; but let's not revive the "intelligent enough" part of the discussion 
now :-)
I didn't find what discussion David was refering to in the initial post, so 
please excuse me if this has already been mentioned and regarded bad:
What about a single "Delete" action in the main menu, context menu and 
keyboard shortcuts that triggers a confirmation dialog like this:

========================================================
| Are you sure you want to delete the following files? |
--------------------------------------------------------
| foo.jpeg                                             |
| bar.mp3                                              |
| blurb.txt                                            |
--------------------------------------------------------
| [x] Keep the files in the trash can for recovery     |
| [ Delete ]                                [ Cancel ] |
========================================================

Where the "Keep the..." (better naming please :-) option would be remembered 
and default to true.
This combines both ways of deletion into one action without the need to add 
any configuration options for it (shift-del could still be there for power-
users to init that checkbox to off).
An alternative would be no such check box but instead three buttons:
"Delete", "Move to trash", and "Cancel", but I'd expect that to look more 
crowded and complex that a check box.

Just some more 2¢ (anyone collecting? :)
-Malte