Re: VDQ : Delete a whole file from within AbiWord?

On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Alan Horkan wrote:

> First off I must make it clear this issue has nothing to do with
> abiword.

         Not to the knowing, maybe; it certainly did in my user's
mind, causing frustration and dismay, followed by complete loss of a
productive train of thought about what she had AbiWord open *for* --
and then in mine, where it did the same.

> The new file chooser does not provide any way to delete files.
> It really wasn't something we expected anyone to be doing very
> often.

         That amazes me. Apart from geniuses (who probably work like
beavers unconsciously), I'd say only the hasty and the careless
subject others to prose that hasn't been revised over and over, much
less expect them to keep reading.

         In email and usenet, to be sure, most of what one writes is
short enough to admit revision and re-revision of the whole piece at
one time. In anything remotely near book length, doing it that way
would be impossible, and disastrous nine times out of ten if tried.

> You must admit it is an unusual way of doing things compared to
> using the file manager as Hubert suggested.

         On the contrary, imnsho that way is vastly inferior and
troublesome, even with something less irritating than Nautilus --
and would be to a serious writer even given familiarity with
Nautilus.

         You have to interrupt your concentration on writing by
getting out of AbiWord, then deal with the distraction, then get
back to where you were, and only then try to recover your train of
thought, to which the deletion was utterly ancillary.

         It will help, of course, when I once get my user accustomed
to the benefits of the workspace switcher. Help, but not cure: even
then, she'll immediately ask if she's going to damage anything by
deleting a .abw while AbiWord is running -- and I'll have to go try
it on another machine to make sure.

         And that's under linux. You may have forgotten how
frustrating the constant crashes of certain operating systems can
be. I'm trying to. She hasn't.

>> is Nautilus so complicated to use ?
>
> Frankly yes, and I bet you use the command line often enough to
> recognise that Nautilus makes many tasks more complicated than
> alternate ways of doing things.

         Agreed, in thunder: far more complicated, and slower -- both
needlessly. I don't know of another linux app I like less.

> I guess it wouldn't kill the GTK developers to have the Delete key
> actually do something in the file chooser dialog, and perhaps
> include delete in the context menu.

         Filing a bug report is not within my competence, alas!, nor
apt to come within it in the foreseeable. But I assure any developer
who may read this that some at least are very surprised to hear the
task can't be done with a couple of keystrokes, and would welcome
that change.

-- 
Beartooth Neo-Redneck, Linux Evangelist, Cantankerous Codger
(sometime servant of Minerva, Goddess of Knowledge)
No one can ever have enough books, pockets, friends, guns, or garlic.
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