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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Consistency/Look&Feel in renamedlg
From:       Fabian Wolf <fabianw () gmx ! net>
Date:       2003-03-30 15:44:12
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On Sunday 30 March 2003 11:47, Brad Hards wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:17, Fabian Wolf wrote:
> > Everytime I see this dialog it takes me a couple of seconds to figure out
> > which file is the one that's about to be overwritten. Maybe because
> > something like "Source File" and "Existing File" which is easy to
> > recognize at a glance is missing and one has to read (and understand) the
> > entire explanation above - it looks nice though.
>
> The "Source File" is a confusing concept. Source of what?

True that, but what could be used instead?
"New file" ? - Naw, it could be older!
"File that is going to replace the existing file" ? - Kinda long, isn't it?
"File about to be copied" ? - Same as above, too long.

> It needs to be clearer (irrespective of the file type, and the additional
> information provided), what is going to happen - that is, that a file that
> is stored on disk is going to be obliterated by overwriting it with some
> different content (which may or may not already be a file on disk). I don't
> really get that from any of the dialogs you provided.

It's just that I can't think of anything better than "Source" either.
Can we expect the user to understand what is meant with "Source"?
How much stupidity of the user do we have to take into account and workaround?

> I am not sure how to solve it, though to help the user, it is probably
> worth highlighting what is actually different about the files, rather than
> showing what is the same (eg if the size is different, show that in red,
> while all the other stuff that is the same goes in black).

That's on my todo list :)

Might it be helpful to drop the "existing" and "source"- label and make the 
"source" semi-transparent or some other effect to show that it's not existent 
at the destination folder rather than being about to be copied?

Sometimes I think we care too much about how users might interpret dialogs - 
they just need to get used to it...

-- 
* 100,000 lemmings can't be wrong
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