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From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Dear Apple: Finder feature wanted
Message-ID: <708@unc.cs.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 18:59:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.708
Posted: Mon Jun 29 18:59:23 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 01:51:49 EDT
References: <5449@ut-ngp.UUCP> <2758@phri.UUCP> <8351@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele)
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 42
Keywords: size of folders

In article <8351@ut-sally.UUCP> stevew@ut-sally.UUCP (Steve Williams) writes:
>
>I'm new to the net, but not the Mac.  One thing that has always irked me
>about the Finder on a hard disk system is the insistence on emptying the
>trash at every application launch.  I had hoped that HFS would fix this,
>but no, everytime you change to another application, there goes your trash.
>
>What I propose is another flag in the LAYO resource that controls wheter
>the trash auto-dumps.  Floppies SHOULD dump, but it is not always necessary
>on a 20M hard disk.

Whether trash should be emptied depends only indirectly on whether you're
running a floppy or a hd.  The two direct questions are (1) will I need
the space used by this file before I get back to the finder again, and (2)
do I want the next person who gets foo's hands on this [hard] disk to be
able to pull my file out of the trash.  On a hd you're less likely to need
the space, but sometimes you will and often on a floppy you won't
(although this is less and less likely as System/Finder->800K :-) I'll
ignore (2).

The way to get around (1) is to make the concepts "Trash", "Throw a file
in the Trash" and the "Empty the Trash" part of the File Manager instead
of just part of the Finder interface to the File Manager (this falls under
the category of making the internal data structures parallel the user
model).  "creat", "allocate", and anything that needs more disk space
could reclaim the space used by a file and delete it from a real "Trash"
directory under HFS.  Likewise, "delete" could move the file into
"Trash".  Note that this is exactly what happens when you're in the
finder from the user's viewpoint; making "Trash" a real folder and moving
the actions that use it into the File Manager just maintain the
illusion consistently across applications.

I don't expect Apple to make the above change.  Although I don't see
anything wrong with it, and would like to see it too, it's a rather major
change, doesn't solve a very major problem, and might have unexpected
repercussions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Steele				  ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele
							steele%unc@mcnc.org

	"They're directly beneath us, Moriarty.  Release the piano!"