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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Against the system:/, media:/ and home:/ namespaces
From:       Manuel Amador <rudd-o () amautacorp ! com>
Date:       2005-07-12 20:36:15
Message-ID: 1121200576.2305.27.camel () master ! amauta
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El lun, 11-07-2005 a las 03:05 +0200, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau escribió:

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

Yes, exactly this use case is one of my biggest concerns... not to
mention that dragging from a konqueror running as my user to a konqueror
running as root will create who knows what havoc!  admins use this every
day.

> 
> > 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
>  >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
-- 
Manuel Amador                   <rudd-o@amautacorp.com>
http://www.amautacorp.com/            +593 (4) 220-7010
 
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