"Stephan B. Wessels" <swessels at one.net> is claimed by the authorities to have written:

> Constructive feedback is welcome.
Congratulations on makinga start on one of the more important things we
need in order to be able to forget the host OS and their idiocies.

My two pennorth follows.
The most basic file handling widget should be able to list the files in
a directory (including contained directories of course) and allow you
to:-
+ select one or more items
+ find info about a selected file/directory (size, permisions, whatever)
+ change info (usually name or permissions, some OS's allow others)
+ 'open' the file/directory in some sense: directories typically would
open by making a new widget or possibly 'zooming in' within the current
one. Personally I despise the ugly cumbersome tree type views from
windows etc. Files would need some type/extension based rules to decide
what to do.
+ drag selected item(s) to another widget, thus effecting a copy or move
(typically a modifier key might be used to choose between the two)

Note that directories can often contain hundreds or thousands of files,
so an efficient listing algorithm (several improvements to pluggable
list morphs etc have been suggested recently) is crucial.

Useful extensions would be to allow more varieties of display (icons, icons
with elided names, ordering, purely text lists, whatever), dragging to
'applications', net awareness for access to servers or other users, all that
stuff.

I'd say the key point is making a good functional link between the OS
idea of where files are and drag/drop manipulation. Pretty displays and
so on are much less important until the functionality is really solid.


tim
-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
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