[Thunar-dev] overwriting files and the trash

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 14:57:35 +0200, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 12:41:16 +0000 (UTC), Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:57:28 +0100, Erlend Davidson wrote:
>> 
>> > On 2 Aug 2006, at 17:37, Rodrigo Coacci wrote:
>> > 
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 8/2/06, Erlend Davidson <E.R.M.Davidson at sms.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >> Samuel Verstraete wrote:
>> >> > Hi Benny,
>> >> >
>> >> > 2 small issues...
>> >> >
>> >> > First: I was wondering if the expected behaviour of overwriting  
>> >> files
>> >> > would be to store the "overwritten" file in the trash... i
>> >> > certainly was expecting this but it might be just me ;)
>> 
>> I second that.
> 
> I wouldn't say moving overwritten files to the trash is the expected
> behaviour. 

I don't know. For me, it is.

> After all, that's why the "Are you sure you want to
> overwrite this file?" message pops up when you try to replace one file
> with another.

That shouldn't pop up. Rather the status bar should say "replaced
file \"foobar\"" afterwards. Generally. confirmation dialogs are annoying.
It should just: 
1) do what is obvious 
2) tell me about it in an unintrusive way 
3) let me undo it easily 
in that order.

I'd also very much like it to make sure that newer files - with higher
mtime - are kept, no matter what (maybe only after it asking.... hmm. No,
actually, _always_. If you want to trash a newer file, click on Delete on
your own ;)).

and btw (kind of unrelated, but...):
I'm really unhappy with how most filemanagers
handle merging of folders anyway. Either the filemanager should 
1) overwrite the _entire_ folder (and that _does_ mean trashing the old
one) or 
2) give some real thought on how to do the merging, like giving a summary
at the end (in the status bar or some other not annoying place):
- which files are new now? 
- which files were modified? 

(If a mistake is made, one can always do Edit > Undo. Oh wait :))

Note that I'm not objected to 1), but the current situation is really
neither 1) nor 2), which is sad.

Yeah, I know, one can't ignore inertia. But let's at least try to make it
a little bit better.

Yeah, I do way too much file manager prototyping :)

cheers,
  Danny