6 ms·

Ranting in Gibbons:) Still i wonder how much it effects my productivity decline in Office since i still search sometimes for functionality. In anyway it made m

Ranting in Gibbons:) Still i wonder how much it effects my productivity decline in Office since i still search sometimes for functionality. In anyway it made me hate office and made Switch to open Office wherever i can. However I attribute it to having kicked of my quest for a plaintext workflow because beeing f*ked over by feature bloat and Designer circle jerking once to many times. Simplicity is king. Maybe its just the age that makes me realize that there are just to many layers of complexity. I feel for the young learners that get thrown into this world and dont even understand the concept of a file system tree anymore. It has been abstracted away. it's not in the cloud! It's in the app with 3 klicks reachable or doesn't exist.

stevesimmons 5y ago
I can't figure out how to reach my files in Windows 11. There are around 6 Documents folders/libraries/whatever in File Explorer, going to a combination of my work OneDrive, my personal OneDrive and my local user folder. There's one weird Documents that goes to the Documents in both OneDrives. There's a My Documents that give an error. I've a work Sharepoint folder that was also named Documents. I tried renaming them, which didn't work, and has just left me even more confused how to find things. If I go to the command line and do "dir C:\Users\<me>\Documents" which of this do I find? And how do I get to the others? And which ones get backed up where? It's a complete mess. I sympathise now with the people who keep every file on the desktop. Every time I go back to Linux, I feel a wave of relief: I see my files in a single dir tree under /home, searching works predictably. How did Microsoft get to this?
- KronisLV 5y ago
  > It's a complete mess. I sympathise now with the people who keep every file on the desktop. The UI in regards to navigating files in Windows is indeed a mess. A personal gripe that i have with it, that's even worse than some of what you named is the file open/save dialog - there's not just one (that would let you write the file path in the bar and thus allow you to copy paths from Explorer to it), but many different ones for different programs! This essentially makes it so that using some software like GIMP and navigating around the filesystem with it is needlessly annoying! Add on small annoyances like Windows search by default trying to look into the contents of many files, thus making search needlessly slow and also things like it not supporting mounting remote directories over SFTP (which should get at least a bit of attention) instead of always having to use SMB or whatever, and you have a somewhat problematic daily experience. Of course, there are also things that it does better than some other systems/configurations, like having the whole recycle bin concept, with ctrl+Z allowing you to undo file deletions, file moves or even renaming files, which makes dealing with user error on your part more easy! Just checked on Linux Mint - the recycle bin works as you'd expect, but there is no ctrl+z to restore the last deleted file automatically. > Every time I go back to Linux, I feel a wave of relief: I see my files in a single dir tree under /home, searching works predictably. About this, i'm also somewhat torn. The filesystem structure on most Linux distros also just feels weird, although it's for historical compatibility reasons (not quite as bad as Windows having two oddly named Program Files directories, but still). I doubt that we couldn't structure things in a more reasonable manner, than having all of the following for just executables, for example: /bin/ /sbin/ /usr/bin/ /usr/local/bin/ /usr/local/sbin/ In case anyone wants to learn more about these, here's the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard document, which is actually pretty well written: https://www.pathname.com/fhs/ https://www.pathname.com/fhs/ Throw in /opt and /usr/share and whatnot and it's a recipe for different bits of software out there using different configurations because of differing opinions about what would be suitable for their use cases. The same mess actually extends to what's in the /home directory - sure, in most cases you can back it up and restore it, but once again every piece of software will have its own opinions about how to structure its data, be it in a visible/hidden config file, a visible/hidden folder for the application itself, or something else. Of course, Windows also has a similar mess going on with Program Data and AppData folders, as well as Documents and whatnot, so Linux isn't the only problematic system here. In short, i think that all have their advantages and shortcomings, here's hoping that things improve in the following decade!
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > not quite as bad as Windows having two oddly named Program Files directories, but still At least three, if you inclde "Roaming\Appdata" (or is it "Appdata\Roaming"?), which is also a program files directory nowadays. As for Linux, yeah... Either stick with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, or -- if it's time to revolutionise the directory structure -- maybe something like what GoboLinux (et al?) are doing.
    - tremon 5y ago
      On my Guix systems, I've gone full obstinate idiot: - / is on tmpfs - the OS is mounted on /gnu - system data is mounted on /var (and /etc is populated from /var/etc) - user data is mounted on /usr This way, I can avoid the plethora of separate tmpfs filesystems on most distro's (at least /dev, /run, /tmp, /dev/shm). But I'm not running any desktop systems on Guix right now, just service containers. I'm would expect there to be plenty of Linux desktop software that can't handle /usr being for user data.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    > The UI in regards to navigating files in Windows is indeed a mess. A personal gripe that i have with it, that's even worse than some of what you named is the file open/save dialog - there's not just one (that would let you write the file path in the bar and thus allow you to copy paths from Explorer to it), Note that even in the older-style file dialogs, that don't have that new (relatively speaking) breadcrumbs-style file path display at the top (like in Windows Explorer), you can still paste a path into the file name input box and it'll navigate to that folder. Relative paths also work. The only drawback is that the file name will then be reset to whatever it was when the dialog was initially opened, but other than that it works nicely. > but many different ones for different programs! This essentially makes it so that using some software like GIMP and navigating around the filesystem with it is needlessly annoying! The problem is a) backwards compatibility – programs can customise the file open/save dialogs to quite some extent, so they need to explicitly opt into using the new dialogs. Plus software that wanted to support older Windows versions (pre-Vista, so these days it's probably not that relevant any more, but during the Vista/7-era it definitively mattered) then needs to have code to handle both kinds of file dialogs. b) as far as I can tell, some cross platform frameworks use completely self-written file dialogs, which 1) usually mimic the older (Windows XP and older) style of Windows' dialogs and b) usually don't manage to copy all the features of Windows' native file dialogs, and instead often get some things subtly (or less subtly) wrong. My personal gripe with the breadcrumbs file path navigation is that the breadcrumbs dropdowns don't support keyboard navigation like the main explorer window (or the file list in the file open/save dialogs) does, so when you have a folder with lots of subfolders and want to use the breadcrumbs to change the path, you then need to do lots of scrolling instead of simply being able to press a key.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  I finally caved into the pressure and started using onedrive instead of local storage, but STILL it seems to take umpteen clicks to load/save from office. Is there any way to navigate the onedrive folder hierarchy without clicking through to the old file dialog? If there is I haven't found it.
- soco 5y ago
  I installed Everything, disabled Windows search/indexing and I always start working with files from there. Windows Explorer is simply not worth the hassle.
  - C19is20 5y ago
    I use the portable (no install) version of Everything. http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  Don't let MS tell you where to save your files. C:\docs (or similar) will always work (until nothing is stored locally). Avoid the "My Computer" paradigm.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    This^. I still have my muscle memory tuned to creating and using only: C:\Games C:\Music C:\Movies C:\Pictures C:\Torrents C:\Workspace I hate the default C:\Users\ChuckNorris89\Pictures\ or whatever. Much prefer the linux ~/Pictures instead. Or maybe this just shows how old I am.
    - salamandersauce 5y ago
      Well ~ is basically just a shortcut to /users/ChuckNorris89. It's kind of surprising MS hasn't mapped ~ to go to basically the Windows home folder. In R on Windows you can use ~ to go there at least which is nice.
      - RReverser 5y ago
        FWIW ~ works in PowerShell too.
    - willis936 5y ago
      %CSIDL_MYPICTURES% %USERPROFILE%\Pictures https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usmt-recognized-environment-variables https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usm... You can also add your own environment variables. setx pix "%SYSTEMROOT%\Pictures"
      - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        It works great but you won't escape the merriad of system folders in Documents or Pictures that way. Apps, games and the OS itself flooding these folders is the main problem why file management on Windows sucks.
- cjbgkagh 5y ago
  They start off by being very bad at search, they then compound the issue by creating the Library concept that transparency blends multiple nodes in the tree structure together. Then they make it needlessly slow.
teekert 5y ago
I'd certainly try LibreOffice which is much better supported and modern than the sort of abandoned OpenOffice.
garaetjjte 5y ago
>I feel for the young learners that get thrown into this world and dont even understand the concept of a file system tree anymore. Linking to my previous rant on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28994133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28994133

stevesimmons 5y ago

I can't figure out how to reach my files in Windows 11. There are around 6 Documents folders/libraries/whatever in File Explorer, going to a combination of my work OneDrive, my personal OneDrive and my local user folder. There's one weird Documents that goes to the Documents in both OneDrives. There's a My Documents that give an error. I've a work Sharepoint folder that was also named Documents. I tried renaming them, which didn't work, and has just left me even more confused how to find things. If I go to the command line and do "dir C:\Users\<me>\Documents" which of this do I find? And how do I get to the others? And which ones get backed up where? It's a complete mess. I sympathise now with the people who keep every file on the desktop. Every time I go back to Linux, I feel a wave of relief: I see my files in a single dir tree under /home, searching works predictably. How did Microsoft get to this?

KronisLV 5y ago
> It's a complete mess. I sympathise now with the people who keep every file on the desktop. The UI in regards to navigating files in Windows is indeed a mess. A personal gripe that i have with it, that's even worse than some of what you named is the file open/save dialog - there's not just one (that would let you write the file path in the bar and thus allow you to copy paths from Explorer to it), but many different ones for different programs! This essentially makes it so that using some software like GIMP and navigating around the filesystem with it is needlessly annoying! Add on small annoyances like Windows search by default trying to look into the contents of many files, thus making search needlessly slow and also things like it not supporting mounting remote directories over SFTP (which should get at least a bit of attention) instead of always having to use SMB or whatever, and you have a somewhat problematic daily experience. Of course, there are also things that it does better than some other systems/configurations, like having the whole recycle bin concept, with ctrl+Z allowing you to undo file deletions, file moves or even renaming files, which makes dealing with user error on your part more easy! Just checked on Linux Mint - the recycle bin works as you'd expect, but there is no ctrl+z to restore the last deleted file automatically. > Every time I go back to Linux, I feel a wave of relief: I see my files in a single dir tree under /home, searching works predictably. About this, i'm also somewhat torn. The filesystem structure on most Linux distros also just feels weird, although it's for historical compatibility reasons (not quite as bad as Windows having two oddly named Program Files directories, but still). I doubt that we couldn't structure things in a more reasonable manner, than having all of the following for just executables, for example: /bin/ /sbin/ /usr/bin/ /usr/local/bin/ /usr/local/sbin/ In case anyone wants to learn more about these, here's the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard document, which is actually pretty well written: https://www.pathname.com/fhs/ https://www.pathname.com/fhs/ Throw in /opt and /usr/share and whatnot and it's a recipe for different bits of software out there using different configurations because of differing opinions about what would be suitable for their use cases. The same mess actually extends to what's in the /home directory - sure, in most cases you can back it up and restore it, but once again every piece of software will have its own opinions about how to structure its data, be it in a visible/hidden config file, a visible/hidden folder for the application itself, or something else. Of course, Windows also has a similar mess going on with Program Data and AppData folders, as well as Documents and whatnot, so Linux isn't the only problematic system here. In short, i think that all have their advantages and shortcomings, here's hoping that things improve in the following decade!
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > not quite as bad as Windows having two oddly named Program Files directories, but still At least three, if you inclde "Roaming\Appdata" (or is it "Appdata\Roaming"?), which is also a program files directory nowadays. As for Linux, yeah... Either stick with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, or -- if it's time to revolutionise the directory structure -- maybe something like what GoboLinux (et al?) are doing.
  - tremon 5y ago
    On my Guix systems, I've gone full obstinate idiot: - / is on tmpfs - the OS is mounted on /gnu - system data is mounted on /var (and /etc is populated from /var/etc) - user data is mounted on /usr This way, I can avoid the plethora of separate tmpfs filesystems on most distro's (at least /dev, /run, /tmp, /dev/shm). But I'm not running any desktop systems on Guix right now, just service containers. I'm would expect there to be plenty of Linux desktop software that can't handle /usr being for user data.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  > The UI in regards to navigating files in Windows is indeed a mess. A personal gripe that i have with it, that's even worse than some of what you named is the file open/save dialog - there's not just one (that would let you write the file path in the bar and thus allow you to copy paths from Explorer to it), Note that even in the older-style file dialogs, that don't have that new (relatively speaking) breadcrumbs-style file path display at the top (like in Windows Explorer), you can still paste a path into the file name input box and it'll navigate to that folder. Relative paths also work. The only drawback is that the file name will then be reset to whatever it was when the dialog was initially opened, but other than that it works nicely. > but many different ones for different programs! This essentially makes it so that using some software like GIMP and navigating around the filesystem with it is needlessly annoying! The problem is a) backwards compatibility – programs can customise the file open/save dialogs to quite some extent, so they need to explicitly opt into using the new dialogs. Plus software that wanted to support older Windows versions (pre-Vista, so these days it's probably not that relevant any more, but during the Vista/7-era it definitively mattered) then needs to have code to handle both kinds of file dialogs. b) as far as I can tell, some cross platform frameworks use completely self-written file dialogs, which 1) usually mimic the older (Windows XP and older) style of Windows' dialogs and b) usually don't manage to copy all the features of Windows' native file dialogs, and instead often get some things subtly (or less subtly) wrong. My personal gripe with the breadcrumbs file path navigation is that the breadcrumbs dropdowns don't support keyboard navigation like the main explorer window (or the file list in the file open/save dialogs) does, so when you have a folder with lots of subfolders and want to use the breadcrumbs to change the path, you then need to do lots of scrolling instead of simply being able to press a key.
sideshowb 5y ago
I finally caved into the pressure and started using onedrive instead of local storage, but STILL it seems to take umpteen clicks to load/save from office. Is there any way to navigate the onedrive folder hierarchy without clicking through to the old file dialog? If there is I haven't found it.
soco 5y ago
I installed Everything, disabled Windows search/indexing and I always start working with files from there. Windows Explorer is simply not worth the hassle.
- C19is20 5y ago
  I use the portable (no install) version of Everything. http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
Don't let MS tell you where to save your files. C:\docs (or similar) will always work (until nothing is stored locally). Avoid the "My Computer" paradigm.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  This^. I still have my muscle memory tuned to creating and using only: C:\Games C:\Music C:\Movies C:\Pictures C:\Torrents C:\Workspace I hate the default C:\Users\ChuckNorris89\Pictures\ or whatever. Much prefer the linux ~/Pictures instead. Or maybe this just shows how old I am.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    Well ~ is basically just a shortcut to /users/ChuckNorris89. It's kind of surprising MS hasn't mapped ~ to go to basically the Windows home folder. In R on Windows you can use ~ to go there at least which is nice.
    - RReverser 5y ago
      FWIW ~ works in PowerShell too.
  - willis936 5y ago
    %CSIDL_MYPICTURES% %USERPROFILE%\Pictures https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usmt-recognized-environment-variables https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usm... You can also add your own environment variables. setx pix "%SYSTEMROOT%\Pictures"
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      It works great but you won't escape the merriad of system folders in Documents or Pictures that way. Apps, games and the OS itself flooding these folders is the main problem why file management on Windows sucks.
cjbgkagh 5y ago
They start off by being very bad at search, they then compound the issue by creating the Library concept that transparency blends multiple nodes in the tree structure together. Then they make it needlessly slow.

teekert 5y ago

I'd certainly try LibreOffice which is much better supported and modern than the sort of abandoned OpenOffice.

garaetjjte 5y ago

>I feel for the young learners that get thrown into this world and dont even understand the concept of a file system tree anymore. Linking to my previous rant on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28994133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28994133