Sugar Commander

[Carlos Nazareno]

> I have not found it to be so. I find that the Journal's search capability
> is frequently more useful than a hierarchical view of my files. When I
> want to look at the file system directly, apart from trying to teach it to
> students, I prefer the Midnight Commander.

Journal model completely breaks down once more when you have multiple
files with the exact same same filenames placed in different
directories :-/

Not an uncommon situation if the USB Stick/SD Card is in frequent use
with more traditional systems and used to pass multiple files around.

What if you also don't know the exact filename you're looking for?
What if a friend hands you a USB stick containing hundreds of books
arranged in different folders named by subject/topic? There is a
serious information overload problem with the Journal, more on that
later...

> You can archive a group of files for transfer under a name that will
> appear at the top of the list, or one easy to remember and search for.

This doesn't work. I want to transfer PDF ebooks to XOOS-Sugar. How do
I unzip them and get Sugar to recognize and index them in the journal
once they're in the local filesystem?

> a major reason why kids can't read or edit the source
> code of the OLPC -- because it isn't visible in a journal, and if it
> was in there, it would be painful or impossible to find or organize.

How can we expect kids to open sourcecode and tinker with them (we
have a dedicated key for that on the XO, right?) if we don't want them
to think in terms of traditional files and directories, a concept
that's not hard to grasp?

Another problem is the accumulation of junk journal entries when the
XO is in heavy use. There was mention a while back on working on the
Journal's ability to automatically forget "unimportant" entries, but
honestly, I don't think it's a currently implementable goal because
the definition of "important" is fuzzy -> something the algorithm may
arbitrarily decide should be forgotten might be important to the user.

It's all about information overload, and that's the thing that
heirarchical directories solve: it allows the user to browse and
organize files in easily categorized presentations.

How about adding the following alternate view to the Journal also?
1) The ability to view entries by activity -> extremely useful for
obvious reasons when the journal gets cluttered with too many entries
and the user
But then, wouldn't that make the journal look more like using
traditional files? How about just putting an additional tab view in
the journal to allow users to view removable media as a traditional
file system?

Again, one shouldn't have to go into the command line and/or use
Midnight Commander to perform highly used everyday tasks like
transferring files -- it destroys the Sugar model and breaks basic
usability/UX principles. I reiterate, those two are hacks and not real
solutions - akin to opening the house/building utility fusebox & using
the circuit breakers instead of using the light switches in the room
to turn lights on/off. You can do it that way, but you *shouldn't*.

-Naz

-- 
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
--
poverty is violence