> There's a possible solution to the desktop cluttering problem: Don't > make the desktop a directory.
I think that's _kind of_ the solution. See both: http://jesseross.com/clients/etoile/ui/project_based/01/ and http://brian.muhumuza.googlepages.com/working_with_objects.html > The open source file manager ROX stores the desktop's contents in a > configuration file. Everything on the desktop is a link to a file. > When opening or dragging the objects on the desktop, the original > file location is used. This way, the user can't save things to the > desktop and is forced to find a better place. Yes -- this is basically what we're intending to do. In truth, everything you manipulate within Etoile is just reference an object within the flat object space, which allows you to have a file exist in multiple places (just like you can give an email multiple tags within Gmail, or a URL multiple tags within Del.icio.us). So nothing is ever _really_ on the Desktop, as there is no Desktop directory (there are no directories at all, in fact). > I strongly believe that forcing people to organise their files in a > proper way is a huge step into the right direction. It would of > course be better if the computer did that for us, but there are way > too many cases where a machine can't do that automatically. (This is > not necessarily just an AI problem - we also lack the resources to > write adapters for every file type.) I don't think we should ever force the user. Forcing users into a certain mode of working assumes that whatever mode we force is somehow better. Some users will never organize their files, some people will. Let's support both styles of working: give a good search interface for those who don't organize, and give a good tagging interface for those who do organize. > I don't agree with the "Inbox" idea. Of course having an "Inbox" > directory is better than just loading it all on the desktop, but the > contents of the Inbox directory will nevertheless have to be sorted > by the user at one point or another. It doesn't free you from the > work of organising your files. What makes it a bad solution is that > it encourages you to postpone all the file ordering. For years I used to use an elaborate hierarchical folder structure for organizing my emails. But eventually, I found I was spending more time trying to figure out where things belonged (and trying to find particular emails after I had "filed them away"), than I was spending time doing useful work. Now, I use a flat email structure, with all my emails in a single folder, and rely on Mail.app's great searching and sorting features. I can locate emails _much_ more quickly, and I don't waste my precious time figuring out how to organize my mail. The point of this is that "not organizing" is part of my workflow, and is very intentional. If I were _forced_ to move things out of my inbox after a certain time, I'd consider that "feature" a nuisance, and would probably just put everything in a single Archive folder anyway. Let's give users flexibility, but let's also realize that we can never protect the user from themselves, only give them the means to undo their mistakes. The idea behind the Inbox isn't that it's a literal directory where these files exist, but that these are objects that appear in the user's Workspace, that are tagged in a certain way which causes them to show up in the Inbox Project (probably tags saying that the object was created by another user and that arrived via a transfer method, like IM or email -- we could also make something called "Today's Inbox" that adds an additional tag called "Arrived today"). Unless you've imagined some better way, the alternative you're proposing is that when an email/IM comes in, a notification pops up saying "move this file where you want" -- that could get really disruptive considering the amount of email some people get... and some people will just let the notifications stack up anyway, because that's just how they work. J. _______________________________________________ Etoile-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-discuss
