when you receive a file with xchat this is placed in ~/.xchat2wouldn't ~/download/ be better?

[Lorenzo E. Danielsson]

On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 19:25 +0100, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> Am Mittwoch, den 17.11.2004, 12:12 +0000 schrieb Lorenzo E. Danielsson:
> > > > Do you want me to go to the desktop and sit and drag and drop every time
> > > > I download something? I'm sure you don't mean that. I've just
> > > > misunderstood you.
> > > 
> > > as i am using nautilus in its default setup and want to actually manage
> > > (in oppsition to browse) my files with the filemanager it is annoying to
> > > have a extra folder on my desktop that i would have to open and
> > > drag/drop my files from there to other folders. and i guess most of the
> > > people out there will use nautilus in its default way (and be it just
> > > because of not knowing the difference).....
> > 
> > Can you explain this, with some examples? You attach two labels to
> > (possibly) different ways of working with files and directories,
> > "managing" and "browsing". Possibly different because you don't really
> > know how I interact with my system. 
> yep, sure.... i wouldnt make such statements if i couldnt explain my
> opinion:

Good.

> browse: if my german translations are right, it means to graze or to
> turn over a page....browsing for me is something i do on unordered data
> that may be a havoc of files, pictures music...whatever you like....
> browsing for me also is digging through deep hierarchies of folders to
> reach my data....browsing is a perfect way for using internet data that
> i can not force in any order....(except trough bookmarking which has
> browsing as a prerequisite)

OK, I can pretty much agree with that.

> manage: putting things in order, categorizing things, dont leave them
> unordered. in the case of files: keeping a very flat hierarchy of a
> little number of folders of a good categorization (actually i dont have
> to open more than 2 folders to reach all my data).....

Mostly OK, but I would probably rather say a rather flat hierarchy of a
rather large number of folders. For instance I used to have a ~/media
directory, consisting of a bunch of sub-directories. I now have all
those sub-directories moved to be sub-directories of ~ instead.

> > If I understand you, you mean that keeping things you download on the
> > desktop constitutes an example of "managing files", but putting
> > downloads in a different folder, even with a clearly defined name, such
> > as "Downloads", is an example of "browsing files". Boy, now I'm
> > confused. In which cases can I create extra folders and I don't end up
> > being called "somebody who browses" (because that appears to be a bad
> > thing). Can I put my development projects in separate folders? My
> > images?
> initially i just wanted to point out that there is a stiff opposition to
> your rigid opinion, because that is how your writing affected
> me....(your sentence didnt imply that you would be open to try it out
> any other way)

Not really sure what to say here. My opinion is rigid when all I wanted
to do was to point out that some people may have a different opinion. If
you present me with good reasons I may change that opinion.

You just wanted to point out that many people don't agree with me. I
suppose you don't consider your own opinion to be rigid although you
really only did the same thing as I did.

You may be (and probably are) right that a majority of people would
prefer downloads to go straight to the desktop. But if I can't make a
minority opinion heard without having negative labels attached to me you
are on a dangerous path indeed.. 

> to come back to the topic: 
> i didnt like the spatial idea when gnome chose it as a default and my
> first idea was to open gconf-editor to change it ... but then i decided
> to give it a try and could slowly see how all my files changed their
> positions on my filesystem into a new (a very sane one i think) order
> while i was changing my behaviour of filemanagement.  at that time i
> still had a "download" folder on my desktop which slowly filled up with
> files i had to sort from time to time to their right place in my
> hierarchy... i thought about it and recognized that there is a good
> amount of time that could get saved if i would put them to the right
> place directly after downloading, so i picked my desktop as a download
> folder and had to clean up on the fly (which is... drag the file to the
> matching folder icon on the desktop, no open folders at all.....no
> rework).

I on the other hand really liked the spatial model from the word go. It
was only when Nautilus went spatial that I began using it (and Gnome for
that matter). I had a short, intense love story with Gnome in the days
when Enlightenment was the default wm (pre 1.0 days). But I went back to
fvwm and stayed there pretty much until Gnome 2.6 came out. Now I'm
pretty much hooked.

> i dont want to force you to do anything you dont want to and probably i
> misunderstood your initial tone, i just wanted to point out that there
> are others, using their systems in another way and that the majority of
> users will keep their setup as is ...default....
> 

Yes. I'm not really worried about the likes of you and me. We can adjust
things to our own liking. My concern is also about the default. To make
it easier for the proverbial Grandma. We might have different ideas
about what that is, and I don't have *any* support to back up that
having a download folder makes things easier. The question is: do you? 

I agree with you to a very large extent. I just don't like the "if you
download files to the desktop you manage your files, if you don't you
browse your files" attitude. I do keep my files organized in folders
such as music, movies, images, and so on. Agreed that structuring my
source code directory structure is more complex, but let's leave that
one aside. Apart from that, I also maintain a (largely temporary)
storage space for my downloaded files, as I don't want to see them on my
desktop. So, why does that mean the I "browse" instead of "manage" my
files?

This is all really a non-issue. I'm not going to get into it any more. I
have other things to do, as I'm sure do you. If the default download
location is the desktop I'll either adapt to it or change it. It won't
determine whether or not I continue using Ubuntu or Gnome.

++Lorenzo;

> 
> ciao
> 	oli
>