[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:07, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/5/28 NoiseEHC <NoiseEHC at freemail.hu>:
>>
>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
>> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
>> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>
>>
>> You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
>> are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
>> of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>>
>>
>> This relies on the assumption that 8 years from now when children grow up we
>> will still use directories. I do not dare to predict the future so I will
>> leave it to you... :)
>
> In graphical environments alone, directories are over 25 years old.
> Since 8 is less than a third of that, there is only one safe bet.
>
> It'd be way more than 25 years, except that we didn't even have
> graphical environments much beyond that. Directories go back
> about 40 years. 8 years is just another 20%.
>
> This isn't the "Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2" feature set.
> This is a concept that is pretty fundamental in computing.
> It crosses platforms, it's in our network protocols, and it's even
> required for all the programming languages that implement Sugar.
>
>> The following things unfortunately cannot be done with a flat filesystem
>> view:
>> 1. Revision based view.
>> 2. Tagging.
>
> First, I think you didn't mean "flat". That's the Journal.
> Second, both flat and tree systems can handle that.
>
>> It is a totally different problem that the current Journal barely implements
>> those things but dropping it in favor of "time-tested" solutions is a
>> mistake IMHO. (Note that no filesystem solves those problems I have
>> mentioned.)
>
> No filesystem should! It looks like GNOME 3.0 will get you those
> features on top of a plain old UNIX-style filesystem tree though,
> without making the filesystem incompatible with both software
> and humans.

As I said earlier, I would like to see hierarchical views of
filesystems in Sugar. They are waiting for someone to implement them.

I think we are beating a dead horse here.

http://coreygilmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/beating_a_dead_horse.jpg

Regards,

Tomeu