Context-sensitive drag 'n' drop in KDE.

[Jonathan Marten]

Hello Rob,

Hopefully you will get some more feedback from the experts, but for
the moment this is just an observation from my own personal point of
view:

Even if this means of operation would be useful for some, please do
not make it the standard means of operation, or an option where the
default is for it to be enabled.  This is indeed the way that Windows
works, and possibly some of the other systems and file managers that
you mention.  But disc partitioning is less apparent on Unix than on
Windows - there are no drive letters, and filesystems can be mounted
anywhere, so it is not possible for the user to tell just by looking
at pathnames whether the operation will be a copy or a move.  Having
data moved instead of copied, without being aware of this, could
result in data loss.

Obviously there can be some visual feedback as to what will happen -
e.g. a "plus" overlay on the mouse cursor for a copy - but in my
experience of using Windows this is easily not noticed.  It's even
easier to miss its converse - the absence of such indicating a move.

Regards, Jonathan




"e-mail robert.m.davies" <robert.m.davies at blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Hello all,
>
> Following some discussion on these bugs:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=287762
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154804
>
> I would be willing (eager in fact) to implement some code to enable
> context-sensitive drag 'n' drop functionality in LibKonq, whereby files
> that are dragged within disk partitions are moved, while those that are
> dragged across partition/disk boundaries are copied (potentially creating
> links if dragged to the desktop?). Similar functionality exists in (amongst
> others) Nautilus, Windows Explorer, and (not 100% sure on this one) OS X
> Finder.
>
> I've only aided in debugging in the past, so this is the first new
> functionality I would be adding to KDE, but I would be glad to implement it
> on my own (at least, say, for the first draft), and then provide the code
> for review.
> However, I don't want to go to these lengths if it would somehow be against
> the views of KDE as a whole. Unsure where to ask such questions, I was
> pointed here, where I ask you the following:
>
>
> Is there any reason for me not to implement context-sensitive drag 'n' drop
> in the LibKonq library?
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Rob Davies

-- 
-- 
Jonathan Marten                         http://www.keelhaul.demon.co.uk
Twickenham, UK                          jjm2 at keelhaul.demon.co.uk