[Thunar-dev] 'Eject' USB drives

[Jonathan Hepburn]

On 10/15/07, Brian J. Tarricone <bjt23 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:50:21 +0200 Stephan Arts wrote:

> I'm pretty sure Thunar doesn't ever eject a device, even when its HAL
> 'storage.requires_eject' property is true, since, after you eject it,
> you can't remount it without an unplug/replug.  It'd be really nice for
> Thunar to include an 'Eject' option for devices that claim to require
> it, but I feel like there was discussion about this, and Benny didn't
> want it (though I could be thinking about something else).
>
> Note that my xfce4-volstatus-icon will indeed do an eject on the device
> if it's required, so you could use that if you're ok with running an
> extra app.
>
> At any rate, I'm not aware of any device that will actually have a
> problem with being unplugged as long as all it's volumes are unmounted,
> so, really, it doesn't matter so much in practice.  Not seeing the
> 'ok to disconnect' message on the device can cause user confusion,
> though.
>
>         -brian

Hi,

My 2% of a metric dollar, and I only put my foot in here because I've
ranted about it on other forums, is that the current Windows-esque
terminology is only going to confuse the user. I have seen this
first-hand, and explaining about asynchronous writes and unmounting in
words of one syllable to non-IT savvy people has cleared up a lot of
confusion that should never exist.

I agree that if peripherals understand an eject command, an eject
command should be sent, for the reasons already stated.

I just think that there needs to be a better perceptual model in the
UI: Possibly involving an icon of an unplugged/plugged cable, and
certainly a "connect/disconnect" model, which people, in my humble
experience, seem to understand better than an "eject" model (why do
you have to eject a device that you have to pull out yourself? Can't I
just pull it out?). Plug and Play has allowed people to forget that
there needs to be a connection made.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.

Slainte,
J