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List:       kde-i18n
Subject:    Re: KFM cheating the user?
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       1999-03-18 8:45:28
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Dave Nash wrote:

> Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > But I agree that in a file manager I just want to see what's
> > actually there, not what the program thinks I want to see.
> > 
> 
> This is really bad.  I am sick of MS doing this kind of thing, I never thought I \
> would see it in KDE. Who is responsible?  Who can we lobby about this?

If you read back through the kde-devel archive on this point, there was quite a long \
public debate/discussion about how to make it easier for users to edit kdelnk files, \
esp. for users who are not that versed in the differences between the super-user and \
a normal user on Linux, and also b/c users were suggesting that they did not want to \
have to log in as root to change kdelnk settings.  See the discussion at \
http://lists.kde.org/?t=91326718700002&w=2&d=1&r=1, among other threads.  As I recall \
nobody at that time raised these concerns; if they had, it is likely the developes \
would have addressed them.  The point was obviously not to "cheat" anybody but to try \
to make a confusing task easier and to make KDE better.  Of course, one clear thing \
is, no decision anybody can ever make will please everybody, especially if they don't \
voice their displeasure at the time the decision is being made.

On the merits of the issue, I think it would be nice if active directories had a \
special icon for the folder (perhaps a gear in the middle of the folder) to indicate \
that you are not getting raw data from the disk.  On the other hand, I don't think \
anyone should be that surprised by this since kfm does a lot of things that "ls" does \
not do, like show the mimetype of files, display html, permit clicking on files to \
open them, etc.  In fact, with the use of a .kde.htmI or index.html file any \
directory can become an "active' or "cheating" directory (although there is an option \
to disable these).

Regards,

Andreas Pour


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