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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Problem with kfm unifying dirs
From:       Mathias Kettner <kettner () suse ! de>
Date:       1999-04-16 15:29:13
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kfm has a behaviour that is intended to be user friendly:

If you select file:/opt/kde/share/applnk/, what you see is a kind of
unification of /opt/kde/share/applnk/ and ~/.kde/share/applnk. System-
and Userinstalled icons are mixed up. On the first view, everything
seems to be nice for the user, but the Idea of showing two directories
in one window is very confusing.

What I mean is, that the concept is not bullet proof at all.  For
example: I open kfm with /opt/kde/share/applnk and drag the drawer
Utilities to my panel. There I click onto the icon - but: I have all
Utilities in ~/.kde/share/applnk/Utilities there and all
system-installed utilities are missing.

But if if I click right onto the icon within kfm, I come to
the directory file:/home/alex/kettner/.kde/share/applnk/
with ALL link files, even the ones in /opt/kde/share/applnk.

This is totally confusing. If kfm shows a URL of a directory, 
one expects to see excatly the files in this directory - 
not more and not less. If kfm shows two directories at the
same time:

1) I don't know to which of both a file belongs.
2) If both directories contain a file with the same
   name, one of them is hidden.
3) If I create a new file, where does it go
4) where do I get when I select UP.

And so on and so on...

IMHO it make no sense to hide from the user that fact that there is
one system wide file structure and one personal.  If he/she doesn't
know this, sooner or later he will get into problems anyway.


     Greetings,
        Mathias    .'\   /.               What do you think
                 .'.-.-'.-..              about compiling
            ..._:   .-. .-.   :_...       a 2.2.5 kernel?
          .'    '-.(o ) (o ).-'    .
         :  _    _ _~(_)~_ _    _  :
        :  /:   ' .-=_   _=-.    ;\  :
        :   :|-.._  '       _..-|:   :
         :   :| |:-:-.-:-:'| |:'   :
          .   .| | | | | | |.'   .'
            .   -:_| | |_:-'   .'
              -._   ``    _.-'
                  `-------''

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