2009-12-16

mac'finder needs better undo or trash backup

7.19: mis.addn/mac/finder needs better undo or trash backup:

. I should have fixed that cranky card drive
so it would fit the usb socket:
it has this habit of spontaniously losing its connection
-- sometimes during a folder transfer --
so that it will leave an empty folder at the destination;
then when you try the transfer over again,
it says you're overwriting a folder of the same name .
. if you're sure it's from connection loss,
then it's safe to overwrite,
but if your downloading a camera folder,
and didn't rename the last download,
then you need to stop and rename .
. in this case I had both a connection problem,
and I'd forgotten that I recently downloaded without renaming,
so I accidently overwrote this morning's photo' set
with the most recent photo download .

mac does the strangest undo:
. I was hoping I could do something user-friendly on the mac
like cure an accidental overwrite with a simple undo;
unfortunately, even the 10th version of mr.user-friendly
is falling flat on its iconic smiley face .
. the undo returns the moved folder to it's original location;
but, it has not returned the overwritten folder to the mov's destination;
so, try undo again, then it asks for admn permission .
. OK'ing that, I then notice the overwritten has appeared since then
and is now being removed? did I see that right? .
. testing again, I see what happens is that
the next undo (cmd-z) is actually an undo the undo: [redo mov] .

. I'm really surprised that
while the cocoa frameworks supports infinite undo,
the system finder doesn't take advantage of it .
. this is the same stupid behaviour you get from ms`dos:
it has a trash can for things you delete,
but not for things your app's will delete with an overwrite .

. that should be my highest developer priority:
a suite of common app's that provide universal undelete .
. instead of asking you those stupid questions,
it simply renames your name-clashes
unless you ask for clashes to be moved to trash .
. it also offers to do an ms`dos-style merge of clashing folders
if you set the configuration that way:
this merges an subfolders that have clashing names,
and unlike ms`dos,
it will rename filename clashes during a merge
unless you ask for clashing folders to be moved to trash .

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