*** Bug 110243 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Multisession support is not being considered (given the price of a blank CD,
these days...).

Is it planned, then, to remove the "Reuse these files for another CD" checkbox
from the burn dialog ?

No, the "Reuse these files for another CD" checkbox is when you want to create
multiple CDs from the same files.

Oups... yes, pretty obvious :)

*** Bug 147528 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

"The price of the CD" is a very, very, bad excuse to not having multisession
support. 

So, i need to burn 30MB of data on a CD. You're suggesting that i waste 670MB
just because CD is "cheap"? With 670MB i could burn 30MB of data about *20 times*.

So, is it better to buy 20 CD's than to burn it on a single CD?

20 CD's is not cheap at all:

1. I have to spend time going to a CD store just to buy some more CD, and time
is money, and transport is money.
2. It's kinda obvious (duh) that 20 CD's is gonna cost me *20 times* more than
one single CD. Please don't focus on the price of a single CD, think about 20.

I suggest reopening this bug report.

Just have to second the reopening, referring to Joao's reasons. Also, 20 CDs
take up 20 times as much room on the shelf...

After leaving the short "me too" note, I've thought on this a bit more, and
would like to add the following reasons to the list of "why to support
multi-session":

1) CDs are not cheap by everyone's standards (think 3rd world, for example).
2) Waste is waste however you put it; if you end up generating 20 times as much
plastic trash simply because of missing functionality, this doesn't seem like a
sound strategy.
3) Frankly, people _expect_ a CD burner to be able to fill up a disc later. Even
many of the less computer literate. It's a serious break from the intuitive.
4) Nautilus-CD-Burner is kind of the representative CD burner of Gnome; it's bad
PR for Gnome to have it encourage, even enforce said waste by lacking essential
(and expected) functionality.

N-C-B really is basically a nice data burner, simplicity-wise, and I'd like to
be able to recommend it. As it stands, one has to say "Oh, you wanted to
actually use your discs efficiently? Well, you can use k3b or something then..."

So please reconsider this, preferrably in time for 2.10...

Hi!

Same for me, I don't have a diskette drive anymore so I often transport files
via cdrw disks. So right now i have to first copy the contents of the cdrw to my
harddisk then add the new files and then burn it again to the cdrw.

It would be so much more convenient to just append it!

My neighbours (non it people), for which I mostly copy files to cdrws were
actually very surprised that I had to do it this way. Well they are still used
to the old days of diskette drives.

So yes! It would be great if that bug could be reopened!

Thanks a lot. Fabian

I agree about reopening. I just turned a friend's CD into a coaster by
incorrectly assuming that multisession writing is handled automatically.

What I did:

1) insert a multisession CD-R into burner
2) drag a bunch of files to burn:///
2b) assume the files will be appended to the contents of the CD
3) start the burn
4) burning finished, try to mount the CD but discover it won't

If you choose not to support multisession writing, could it at least be possible
to give a warning when the user attempts what I just described?

Please add multisession support at least to DVD+/-R discs (or at least don't
close DVD+/-R disk - don't use -dvd-compat option to growisofs if user writes
less than 4 Gb to DVD disk).
One of my co-workers wasted several DVD disk because of this problem - he wrote
about 1 Gb of data to DVD+R disk and nautilus-cd-burner closed DVD disk :(((

Argument about cheap CD disks is a nonsense - please SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT
(nature) and don't waste CD disks !!!

nautilus-cd-burner creates CDs to be used once. We recommend that you use
rewritable CDs/DVDs if you want to be able to write data on it more than once.

Given the way nautilus-cd-burner works, it's not technically possible to support
multi-session:
- burn:/// is not associated with a CD drive, until nautilus-cd-burner itself is
launched and a drive selected.
- there's no easy way to import the existing layout from a burnt CD
- there's no way to present the existing CD layout to the user that would show
the data is already burnt on the CD

So, if you require multi-session support from a CD authoring program, I would
advise you to use k3b, or Coaster (Coaster doesn't support it, but it would have
a good UI to present it).

If you don't want to add multisession support to n-c-b then at least don't close
CD session if user writes less than 80% of available CD disk space.
This is especially important for DVD+/-R disks - please don't close DVD+/-R disk
 (don't use -dvd-compat option to growisofs) if user writes less than 4 Gb to
single layer DVD disk.
Should I report another bug for this ?

*** Bug 168660 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Ok, so there are technical reasons too. My comments to them:

- burn:/// is not associated with a CD drive, until nautilus-cd-burner itself is
launched and a drive selected.

* Good point, and this should really be corrected. Perhaps a selection box on
the side/top of the burn:// window for the drive, with a reasonable default.

- there's no easy way to import the existing layout from a burnt CD

* This is not a sufficient reason for critical lacks in functionality.

- there's no way to present the existing CD layout to the user that would show
the data is already burnt on the CD

* The visualization issue is, perhaps, a valid one. Can't one create immutable
icons in the window to represent burnt data, though?

If the two latter points are real showstoppers, however, even just having an
empty burn-window that _didn't_ show any of the current files on disk, but only
the free space available, would be IMAO _much, much better_ than the current
"let's just not allow people to append to disks" approach.

I think the behaviour should be:

1. don't close the session if there is enough space on the disk to afford that
(simply adding -multi to cdrecord command-line).

2. if there are previous sessions, add the files to the CD in a new session
while respecting 1. I'm not 100% sure it's very easy on commandline with
cdrecord, but quick googling suggests it is.

that makes it impossible to delete files from previous sessions, but it's not a
common thing to do anyway. For that, it's completely OK to require a specific
program IMHO.

This seems like largely enough features for users while not so hard to add, at
least it seems.

Of course about #17 it still requires to associate the window with a CD drive,
which may be hard to do, but is definitely not impossible and is worth it I think. 

*** Bug 173023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Ok, multi session can be supported technically.

Therefor, the only issue is that of UI. That is also pretty easy.

Here is what I would do:
-Upon the cd being mounted, notice that it is multisession, and open the cd
creator, ala blank cd
-Place the existing content in the window. Grey it out
-Possibly, add a box around it, with a different background, and the words,
"previously burned"

Viola, multisession!

comment #20 please read comment #13 from the developer, which answers your
comments point by point. it's much easier said than done.

that's why i commented maybe we should give up the idea to display the files
previously on the CD.
to view the files previously on the CD you can go to the CD itself. to add files
on the CD use the nautilus CD burner extension and it will add files, not
display the existing files. it's more realistically doable.

Ok, I am not a developer, but a UI guy. 

I read the entire thread and then commented. #16 sums it up best when it says *
This is not a sufficient reason for critical lacks in functionality."

- burn:/// is not associated with a CD drive, until nautilus-cd-burner itself is
launched and a drive selected.

As #16 says, a selection box would be a good idea, but how many users actually
do have multiple burners? On a system with only one burner, burn:/// would
automatically be assigned to that no matter what.

- there's no easy way to import the existing layout from a burnt CD

Not easy, but *doable*

- there's no way to present the existing CD layout to the user that would show
the data is already burnt on the CD

This is of course and issue, but it can be solved too. You know the icon which
is displayed alongside the normal icon when a file/folder is not accessible
(because of permissions?)? Well, do the same thing to existing files, but change
 the icon to something representing already burned data? Thus it would be easy
enough to discover what content is already on the CD, and still distinguish them
and any appended content. This would also allow the "removal" of already burned
files.

#23: two burners on one computer is not so rare. typical case (which is also my
case): the computer came with a CD reader/burner, and the user later bought a
DVD burner => there are two burners in the box.

I'll try to keep this simple.  PLEASE SUPPORT MULTISESSION ON N-C-B.  After all, aren't we trying to make the world a better place with Gnome & Linux?  I introduced Linux to a friend and he was pretty impressed until we came across the CD-burning issue.

I said, he can do multisession in K3B or other cd-burning software and he simply said, well in Windows, you simply plug in the CD, drag the files onto it and that's about it.  Now, I'm not looking for a windows-like CD-burner here but at least support for multisession won't be that much of a hassle.  What's 50 lines of code to fix it?

The simplest possibility would be to always burn with multi-session support and just automatically merge when creating the disc image. It's of course not ideal not to present the merged directory structure to the user but it would be a lot better than it is now, IMO. This would require fixing bug 330010 as creating the disc image might be dependent on the target disc.

As we don't want to accidentally modify the currently inserted disc, there should probably be a dialog similar to the "Erase information on this disc?" dialog allowing the user to either confirm appending data or change the disc.

If that still would be seen as problematic (multi-session drive compatibility or something like that), multi-session support could be made optional with a gconf key and/or a checkbox in the writing dialog.

Would a patch implementing that get accepted?

People, I don't get it. Windows XP implemented multi-session burning from the start, and it displays files already on the CD as greyed out, that's it.

Just go look at the way Windows XP does it and copy it feature for feature, it works very well. Actually the current gnome CD burner looks so much like the XP one that everybody will expect it to work similarly. If it doesn't, that's a sufficient reason to put a warning for the user.

Re-open the bug.

Dear developers,

so, this is 2008, five years after this report was first made, and bug 330010 is already closed. I wonder if the other issues (for example importing the session) have been solved by now.

From a naive user's perspective, multi-session is the most intuitive way to go. Also, since multi-session is transparently supported by Windows XP and MacOSX (besides linux, of course), it just makes sense to ask this to be, not only supported, but in fact the default.

If it's easier said than done, the bug could be reopened, and people could try to provide patches, and improve on the issue gradually. This has been requested over and over, so it's obviously something people want.

I could try to make a patch myself, to make g-c-b default to multi-session. If I succeeded, would it be included?

Just to clarify my previous comment:

the issues in comment #13 could (should?) be dealt in separate bugs, and this one could be reopened to track them. Independently of the usefulness of this bug, those bugs should be fixed also, right? (Again, have they already been fixed?)

*** Bug 332532 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Bastien,

does the move to GIO in GNOME warrant a (oportunity to) change in n-c-b and/or burn:/// in order to provide this feature?

Wasting media just because it is easier to code is not acceptable. I've just run out of DVDs because of this missing feature and I'm wondering if Bastien Nocera is going to deliver some DVD-R/DVD-RW at home quickly and free.

(In reply to comment #32)
> Wasting media just because it is easier to code is not acceptable. I've just
> run out of DVDs because of this missing feature and I'm wondering if Bastien
> Nocera is going to deliver some DVD-R/DVD-RW at home quickly and free.

You're wasting your breath, nautilus-cd-burner is deprecated, and not installed on new systems. It has been replaced by Brasero which supports multi-session append I believe.

And DVD-RW CDs _are_ rewritable. You don't need to throw them away once written to once...

I wouldn't throw them away if they were RW, but they are only writable.

I'm glad to know it is deprecated. I'll search how to disable it, because I'm running gnome 2.28 and it is enabled.