extract here

[Mark Roach]

On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 08:00 +0000, david wrote: 
>Greetings
>
>Why does "Extract here" under Hoary now create an extra, and entirely
>unwanted and useless folder?

Obviously this is a loaded question. The real question is: "is the
folder it creates unwanted and useless?" My best guess about why it does
this is for a couple of reasons:

1: The archive may not put its files under a subdirectory, and "extract
here" may cause the current directory to be littered with all sorts of
files that the user then has to dig through and clean up. If all files
are always in a new subfolder, this can never happen. I have had the
pleasure of this experience in Windows many times.

2: The archive may have folders and files in it that would overwrite
other files. This means that "extract here" would be a potentially
data-killing operation. Many users would not understand why the program
is asking them to overwrite Resume.sxw, and would click yes, or they
might not even think about it until it's too late and their data is
gone.

So, the ultimate answer is, this is a feature, and while you are not the
target audience of this feature, you are also not the target of a
conspiracy :-). 

This may be the kind of thing that the authors would add a gconf
preference for (i.e. file a bug).

-Mark