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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Bug#43093: KFileDialog should not use floppy://
From:       Klas Kalass <klas.kalass () gmx ! de>
Date:       2002-05-30 17:05:59
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Am Donnerstag, 30. Mai 2002 10:01 schrieb Manuel Amador:
> Hi there.  I found that KDE is hard to understand for newbies, and one of
> the major barriers for understanding is the removable/network volume issue.
>
> I\'ve been working with KDE, having used it from 1.0, and I more or less
> understand the KDE way of things and how to configure it for users (be it
> system-wide or per-user).
>
> There is good reason not to use floppy:// from an end-user perspective, but
> maybe the bug title is wrong.
This statement suprises me a lot, because I always thought that the only point 
in having floppy:// was making it easier for former windows users - because 
this way one does not need to do a umount of the floppy device which I am 
sure is the single most error of someone new to Unix. 
But I agree that having two ways presented to a user to access a floppy is not 
good (proper mounting on the desktop and floppy:// in the file dialog).

[...]
>
> The problem arises when the user uses a file open/save dialog, either in a
> KDE app or in a non-KDE app.  Symlinks would be great, since all the user
> would need to do is open the desktop, then the drive, like in a Mac.  But
> .desktop files don\'t cut it, because they don\'t show up as drives on file
> open/save dialogs.  Much less on non-KDE apps, where saving a file
> downloaded from Mozilla, e.g., causes the .desktop file to be REPLACED
> instead of the corresponding volume entered. (I know the gnome file
> selector is a huge piece of stinking crap, but if the user reads Floppy and
> double-clicks it, it is reasonable to expect he intended to open the Floppy
> folder, not replace the Floppy .desktop file.  Symlinks are a way to attain
> such behavior).
This is no KDE issue, bug the distributors. But how do you do mounting with a 
symlink on a system with no automounter? Or do you propose doing a user-level 
automounter for KDE? There are a few such tools (I don't remember exact names 
except for magic mounter) but they all had some problems last time I checked. 
And I honestly doubt that KDE can do anything about foreign apps like 
Mozilla.

[...]
>
> For the network, the work done in the Network Neighborhood by Lycoris is
> good. But there is one thing they left out: the possibility of remote
> mounting of shares.  
I don't know how this is a KDE issue? What do you propose (please keep in mind 
that either root needs to configure fstab correctly or mount the device/share 
himself)?

> Because currently KDE asks you to download files from
> SMB shares. 
Does it? I always thought this was transparent (download and upload of 
modified files)!

> There is no functional equivalent to the \\\\server\\share
> syntax for applications.  The state of non-KDE apps is even worse, because
> they simply won\'t save the file. The user opens the file, modifies and
> saves it, and expects the changes to reside on the network server.
Once again, this is no KDE problem. If you have a *good* solution maybe 
something can be done, but ATM the current scheme works perfectly for KDE 
apps and so does not need to be changed (IMO that is).

>
> One step in the right direction is changing to the TRUE directory when a
> symlink is opened.  This is the new behavior in Konqueror and I applaud it.
>
> on another note, floppy:// is not X terminal-friendly.
Please, either teach your users UNIX or help making the KDE GUI easy, but when 
a user really needs a shell (s)he needs to know some UNIX anyways.

>
> Moreover, I can\'t find a way to configure the sidebar (GUI/CLI/config
> file)
RMB?

>
> (i thought people would understand me, but here I am trying to explain it
> all =)  maybe I needed to write a few good paragraphs.  My end users are
> killing me over this seemingly dumb problem.  Right now I have to tell them
> to save their files to the desktop, then open the Floppy icon and drag the
> files to the window that opens.)
Or tell them to use kwikdisk and teach them the concept of a root directory, 
followed by the concept of mounting and unmounting. If this is too much, they 
should resort to KDE only apps and use floppy://

You might like the new devices io slave.

[..]
> * Automatically mount media on entering a mount point appearing on
> /etc/fstab as user-mountable.  This could be solved with the aid of
> supermount or autofs. Not that both are beautiful solutions, but they work.
once again supermount/autofs is a distribution thing, but asking the user if 
he wants to mount the device/share when he enters a directory mentioned in 
fstab is a good idea, if he is reminded of the unmount and can turn that 
dialog off.

> * The floppy icon on the sidebar could be gotten rid of, or symlinked to
> that mount point where /dev/fd0 is to be mounted.
Rather replace it with devices:/ and improve that one a bit to have more 
descriptive and shorter names.


Greetings,
Klas

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