GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 628447
Undo trashing a file should be prominent in the UI
Last modified: 2013-01-29 10:31:05 UTC
On my keyboard the Delete key is situated right next to the Enter key. Sometimes I accidentally hit the Delete key without noticing it, and the file(s) that happened to be high-lighted at the time are sent to the Trashcan. If the Trashcan then is full of files when I empty it, I probably won't notice the crucial file(s) about to be deleted. I think the option of enabling an "Are you sure you want to move this file to the Trashcan?" prompt when the Delete key is pressed, and files are about to be deleted, would be helpful. I am aware that under nautilus preferences there is an "ask before emptying the Trash or deleting" option, but what I am asking for is an extra layer of protection from accidental file deletions. Another request for this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=697361 Thanks.
Created attachment 183342 [details] [review] Add a new schema for a confirmation dialog before trashing items Hi, the attached patch solves this issues. It has been discussed at length on launchpad when this became one of the "100 papercuts" of Ubuntu ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/nautilus/+bug/95853 ) My patch will give users the possibility to have a confirmation dialog every time they send some items to the trashbin.
Comment on attachment 183342 [details] [review] Add a new schema for a confirmation dialog before trashing items Marking as rejected, as for the discussion on the mailing list. See https://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2011-March/msg00034.html
Changing bug summary. Note that this depends on undo support of bug 167501
I am afraid I have to change the title back to the original, since preventing the act itself of accidental deletion of files or folders is what this bug report is about, not undoing deletion of a file. I feel that parts of the Gnome community lack empathy with new users, coming to the GNU/Linux OS without knowledge of back up programs like rsync, versioning software, or similar highly specialized programs, with which the user can in the future restore files they might accidentally have deleted. I hope that the community will eventually realize that such a little thing can make a big difference to a lot of people, even if it isn't the "correct" way of doing it, according to the UI guidelines.
(In reply to comment #4) > I am afraid I have to change the title back to the original, since preventing > the act itself of accidental deletion of files or folders is what this bug > report is about, not undoing deletion of a file. The use of a dialog there has already been marked as WONTFIX by another Nautilus maintainer, Alexander Larsson, in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316807 some time ago...changing bug summary here won't help. > I feel that parts of the Gnome community lack empathy with new users, coming to > the GNU/Linux OS without knowledge of back up programs like rsync, versioning > software, or similar highly specialized programs, with which the user can in > the future restore files they might accidentally have deleted. > > I hope that the community will eventually realize that such a little thing can > make a big difference to a lot of people, even if it isn't the "correct" way of > doing it, according to the UI guidelines. I don't really agree, trashing a file is a non-destructive operation and, while a nice and easy to use TimeMachine-like backup tool is something cool to have, if the file manager workflow makes you use it often, we already lost. I'm just trying to give your use case another perspective; what you're worried about is accidentally trashing files, because external entities (your cat) might be hitting the Delete key when you're not noticing. (By the way, how often does this happen for you? Did you actually lose files because of this or were you able to recover them from the trash later?) To solve this, we can make trashing harder than just hitting a key, and a confirmation dialog is *not* the only way to do this. Why isn't e.g. using Ctrl+Delete enough for your use case?
I changed the title back to the original title, because the title you have changed it to does not reflect the nature of the bug I filed. It is NOT about "Undo trashing a file should be prominent in the UI", but about preventing a file being accidentally deleted at all. I won't change the title back, even though I think it is wrong. >> > I feel that parts of the Gnome community lack empathy with new users, coming to >> > the GNU/Linux OS without knowledge of back up programs like rsync, versioning >> > software, or similar highly specialized programs, with which the user can in >> > the future restore files they might accidentally have deleted. >> > >> > I hope that the community will eventually realize that such a little thing can >> > make a big difference to a lot of people, even if it isn't the "correct" way of >> > doing it, according to the UI guidelines. > I don't really agree, trashing a file is a non-destructive operation and, while > a nice and easy to use TimeMachine-like backup tool is something cool to have, > if the file manager workflow makes you use it often, we already lost. > > I'm just trying to give your use case another perspective; what you're worried > about is accidentally trashing files, because external entities (your cat) > might be hitting the Delete key when you're not noticing. (By the way, how > often does this happen for you? Did you actually lose files because of this or > were you able to recover them from the trash later?) > > To solve this, we can make trashing harder than just hitting a key, and a > confirmation dialog is *not* the only way to do this. So why not just prevent the file from being accidentally deleted in the first place? Personally, I am the entity that occasionally fat fingers and send a file to the trash can, I don't own a cat. The Delete key on my keyboard is VERY close to the Return and Arrow keys. Sometimes I notice the deletion, sometimes I do later on, if there are not too many files in the trashcan, and sometimes I probably don't. That's why I filed the bug. > Why isn't e.g. using Ctrl+Delete enough for your use case? That might be an option. You mean disable the Delete key, and changing the original behavior to Ctrl+Delete?
I'd like us to use "in app notifications" for this case. They would provide an undo action directly.
Hi, @resa: the default keyboard shortcut for deleting files has been changed to Ctrl+Delete. Does that solve your problem? See below for a durable, desirable solution, and please tell if that would satisfy you. @William Jon McCann: since this bug has been retitled and is now about the "Undo delete" action being obvious and discoverable, what do you think about the UI mockup i attached to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648658#c56 ? Would this be a convenient option to fix this bug? I know it will take time to implement this, but are you ok with the concept? Making the "undo" action more prominent would allow reverting to pressing "Del" only for file deletion - which is good for the reasons I summarized at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648658#c57 - thus would lead to bug 648658 being marked as RESOLVED FIXED too. Happy ending. We can continue discussing this here as bug 648658 has a lot of bad vibes - even though it's a real bug.
@nodiscc: Please don't use NEEDINFO against developers.
@cosimo: nope, I was asking resa for feedback after the Ctrl+Del change. See the first part of comment 8
@nodiscc: Just to make sure, this proposal will change the default keyboard shortcut for deleting files from Delete to Ctrl+Delete, which sends selected file(s) to the Trashcan, right? And nothing happens if Delete is pressed, right? If so, I am all for it!
@resa yes, what you describe is the way nautilus behaves since 3.x (ctrl+delete deletes files, delete does nothing). So I guess you should upgrade to nautilus 3.x to use the new keyboard shortcut. However this seems to have major drawbacks (particularly that this keyboard shortcut is not standard and not discoverable, and only fits special uses cases like yours (non-standard key placement) - see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648658#c57 for a summary and the whole bug report for more explanations). Many think that Del-only should be restored, and ctrl+delete should be made an option. So if Del-only should ever be restored, would the solution proposed in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=214251 and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648658#c57 satisfy you? (that is, make it obvious that something has been deleted, and allow immediate restoration - additionnally, you can already configure keyboard shortcuts to make Ctrl+Del the file deletion shortcut)
@nodiscc The ribbon looks nice, but I wouldn't need it if I could reconfigure Delete key to only delete files on ctrl+delete. Because then I wouldn't delete files accidentally in the first place :-) So having Del-only by default, but being able to reconfigure Delete-key to only delete on ctrl+delete would be a perfectly fine solution for me.
@resa Sorry for taking so long to answer. > So having Del-only by default, but being able to reconfigure Delete-key to only delete on ctrl+delete would be a perfectly fine solution for me. What you describe is the current behaviour in GNOME 3.4+ (delete does nothing, ctrl+delete trashes the file). Please updgrade to gnome 3.4 or later. If you change your mind, you can reconfigure keyboard shortcuts through gsettings to fit your use case. As a side note, a discussion is in progress at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648658 asking whether the Delete key should be the default for deleting files (instead ctrl+del).
@NoDisc: No worries, I am just glad there is work being done on this issue. Personally I think the default behaviour should be: Delete key deletes files, but allow setting it so that only ctrl+del deletes files. That seems to be the most user friendly behaviour to me.