[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Against the system:/, media:/ and home:/ namespaces
From:       "Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" <Friedrich.W.H () kossebau ! de>
Date:       2005-07-11 1:05:57
Message-ID: 200507110306.16840.Friedrich.W.H () kossebau ! de
[Download RAW message or body]

[Attachment #2 (multipart/signed)]


Am Sonntag, 10. Juli 2005 22:22, schrieb Luke Sandell:
> On Wednesday, July 6, 2005 1:20 am, Manuel Amador wrote:
> > Why the hell are we moving away from standard UNIX paths, and inventing
> > another arcane proprietary path/resource location system?
>
> Because the UNIX filesystem is incomprehensible to the average user. No
> casual user is ever going to understand the idea of a single root
> directory, or the concept of "mounting" filesystems. 

Depends of the visual presentation...

> Unfortunately, 
> Windows-style drive letters and synchronous access (that actually works)
> are probably not going to be introduced on UNIX anytime soon, and so there
> is no way to solve this except abstracting it away.

Although the "Letter:" make a nice url, too. I wonder why none of the "we can 
imitate windows" linux vendors has ever implemented such ioslaves for access 
to the windows drives and windows shares :P

> The organization of the UNIX filesystem is not really much of an issue,
> because users generally only care about browsing files in their home
> directory. That is why the Home Folder entries were introduced in the
> Konqueror sidepane and in the file selection dialog. I would support home:/
> if it made sense. Unfortunately, to access my home directory, I would have
> to type home:/luke instead of /home/luke, not much of an improvement.
> Simply home:/ would make sense.

Are relative paths supported? And what happes if you tell your mother "Pick up 
my picture at home:/images/newgirlfriend.jpg..." ;)

> UNIX will never be a feasible desktop OS until mounting is completely
> hidden and transparent to the user. My biggest problem with media:/ is as
> follows: A devices should be automatically mounted whenever the user tries
> to access it (media:/ has done this) and AUTOMATICALLY UNMOUNTED WHENEVER
> THE USER IS DONE ACCESSING IT (media:/ has not done this). There should
> then be no overlay on device icons indicated whether they are mounted or
> unmounted, because user's don't know about mounting. 

But users know the concept of locking and synchronizing (=saving). Mounted 
devices (yes, automatically like you say below) should simply be marked as 
"Not yet synchronized, please wait...". Do not tell them about mounting, tell 
them "Data is still stored... Ready in a minute." This concept is met in a 
lot of places, people are used to it and can deal with it.

> Of course, this could 
> be done automatically through something like subfs, autofs, or supermount,
> but since those tools don't really work and are not widely utilized,
> media:/ will probably have to do this on its own.

media:/ could do its own time-out unmounting, perhaps?

> Other outstanding issues include
>
> 1) mounted filesystems still appear as if they are located on the root
> device (e.g. media:/hd0/media/floppy0 contains the contents of media:/fd0)
>
> 2) there is no userspace mounting on Linux, even if the user has ownership
> of the device node, so hot-pluggable devices cannot be utilized except by
> first mounting them as root or setting them up in fstab, which completely
> defies the definition of "hot-pluggable". It is also no possible to mount
> such things as ISO images in userspace, which if were possible could be a
> great feature for KDE.
>
> 3) the floppy drive must always appear in media:/ on PC systems, even when
> no disk is present, because there is no way to tell if there is one
> present. 

There is a way, but it is too noisy ;)

> Thus, CD-ROMs and other non-hot-pluggable devices should always 
> appear in media:/ as well for consistency.

Please note the difference between pluggable devices and pluggable mediums. So 
not a CD-ROM medium but an empty CD drive should be shown if there is no CD 
inserted. The CD drive might be hotpluggable, too (USB), but that is a 
different story ;) And it would also be nice if the real medium type is 
always shown, like DVD, CDRW or CDROM.

> 4) it is possible for a PC user to remove a floppy disk before it is
> unmounted.

The same applies to USB-Sticks...

Regards
Friedrich

[Attachment #5 (application/pgp-signature)]

 =

>> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscrib=
e <<


[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]