2008-02-25
Dear GUI File Browser makers
When i insert a usb camera in Debian Sarge, it pops up GUI window with the content (pictures and movies). This is very nice. But when i press the 'delete' key, i do expect the selected picture to be 'deleted' from the camera, not moved to the hidden .Trash-Paul directory (and thus still consuming valuable space on the camera).
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8 comments:
I believe the more recent versions of ubuntu say when you unmount it "do you want to remove the trash folder" but I have seen similar things with USB sticks before, indeed very annoying, since at first you don't understand why it still shows full when you just deleted everything :)
To me that seems normal behaviour. Others would otherwise complain that an accidental removal of files does not allow you to recover. That is why it is called "Move to Trash" and not "Delete". Although I have to say, the Delete-key is a bad choice ;-)
There is a shortcut (press shift-delete) for permanently removing files, a seperate file-action for permanent removal (called Delete) as well as the ability to always permanently remove files when pressing the Delete key.
In my opinion, the behaviour should not be different depending on the device because that would be even more confusing for normal users.
You cannot expect a computer to do what *you* want, the behaviour should be deterministic without prior knowledge. The question then would be: What would be the best default for all users ? (and not: What would be the best default for Paul ? ;-)).
grmbl shift-delete...i knew that one. Good point.
Still, i don't like the concept of creating a unix directory .Trash-paul on a digital camera. The device has no use for this unless attached to a unix.
And i think users will be confused when they cannot take pictures with an empty digital camera.
But i can see the need for 'undelete' with end users...and moving it to ~/.Trash-paul would also be confusing.
When I wrote my earlier post, I had time-constraints, but I just looked up how you could have a temporary delete in Gconf (Configuration Editor).
/apps/nautilus/preferences/enable_delete
This will do (as Gconf calls it) an immediate and in-place delete.
When searching gconf keys, I also found the option from gthumb to do a delete after copy, so if you were using gthumb (and I would expect any other tool) you could actually ask for the removal. Picasa does that as well, if enabled.
I guess, you are not the typical user, Paul :-)
Well actually I find still that it should move it to the general trash on my HDD in stead of creating a trash folder on the device (windows does it like this, no?)
Moving it to the hdd means 'end users' need to connect the device to the same computer to perform an undelete...and it can be slow over usb...so imho that is not a better solution.
Seems i'm not the only one with this idea:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/58/
paul
I just want a simple way to turn delete into what it should be, a delete key. Not shift delete.
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