Re: I want to manage my own files (mini-rant)

Woody wrote
Martin S Taylor <hogwash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I had a look at Bento, the new database management program from FileMaker.

The thing I like least (apart from its name, obviously) is that it appears
to
be another program moving towards hiding where your files are kept. They're
all managed by the central program, and you don't actually know where they
are.

Do you actually need to?

Yes. To send to other people, for instance. To share in a public folder. To
copy for backups. To create aliases to them. To organise them in folders. To
see how much space is being taken up on the hard drive by these files...

This philosophy seems okay for iTunes (where you automatically want the
program to play a whole list of files sequentially).

Except that iTunes explicitly tells you where the library is in one of
the preferences. In fact, not only that, but you can tell it where you
want it to be. Also you can click on any file and say either 'get info'
which tells you where it is, or 'show in finder' which does as it says,
so they are not hidden in any sense of the word.

Yes, iTunes was the first program to do this, so it's a kind of half-way
house: there are all sorts of facilities in the program to show you where the
files are.

For iPhoto it's more questionable. How do you edit a photo if you don't want
to use the inbuilt editor? Yes, I know you can export then re-import, but
still...

how about clicking on them and selecting 'edit in external editor'?
Works for me.

Yes, but it's still a pain to share on your disk, or create aliases to them.
Or organise them in sub-folders...

With iCal it's getting out of hand. I want to export calendars in a format
so
that I can hack them about, share them in ways of *my* choosing.

Well, yes, iCal has crap exporting options, always did. That isn't
hiding data, that is just having crap export formats.

But it's still hiding data, isn't it? Does it say where the calendars are
kept?

And now a database management program which doesn't let you know where the
database is kept?

Does it not say anywhere?

Don't think so. I'm sure I could find out, but it's the philosophy of the
thing I'm grumbling about.

How long before Pages won't tell you where your documents
are - it just indexes them all for you in the program?

But you can open and save them.

Yes, at the moment. That was my point.

Part of the problem is that it means Apple can fill up your hard drive with
tasteless 'templates' which it's not easy to delete.

They are in the bundle, in a folder called templates in resources, so
not really hard to delete.

You and I know that, but most people don't. And the idea of mucking about
with the *application* itself (which is what it feels like) always seems a
bit risky. When the application starts doing odd things, for instance, it's
something User Support can always blame your problem on.

And if you need to reinstal a program, wouldn't it be nice not to have to
instal all the templates with it?

If they were just bog-standard
stationery files, you could ditch the ones you didn't like without any
trouble. Not the way it's done now.

Sorry - don't see a difference here. If I look at templates in word it
takes more time to find out where they exist on the disk than where they
exist in pages.

It's not time that's the issue: it's the philosophy of having *their*
aesthetic tastes built in to a program which is supposed to let *me* be
creative.

But the worst part is restoring from a backup. We now have this wonderfully
efficient Time Machine (some of us) but what's the point of allowing us to
restore files we've mistakenly deleted if we have no idea where they were
kept?

That is true, but then you are falling into a gap of people who can't
work out where stuff is kept such as the iCal calendars, the pages
templates, the bimbo databases, and the rest of the people who don't
know where anything is kept if it isn't on the desktop (which is the
large majority of people).

I think that's a bigger 'gap' than you think.

I agree that iCal, say, is easy to use out of the box, but if you
mistakenly delete a calendar, how is a novice supposed to restore it using
Time Machine? Restore the whole hard drive?

How would you suggest it would be stored to allow people to restore the
calendar? Other than have 'restore calendar' option, I doubt it would
help.

When you create a calendar, iCal could ask you 'Where do you want to save
it?' and stick up a dialog box. Not too hard, is it?

MST

.

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