Deleting Files and Restoring From Trash

Just a quick Public Service Announcement…

From Files (nemo on my L5), if you select Delete from the menu, a file will be deleted without recoverability.

If you select Move to Trash instead, you gain the ability to restore the file after deletion.

2 Likes

delete on the L5 is probably the equivalent of SHIFT + Delete key combination from a desktop keyboard …

1 Like

What ? no screenshot !!! :smiley:
Here:

@amarok: is there a way to right click with the touchscreen ? long touch I guess ?
Because I did my screenshot (from VM) with a mouse to pop up the menu

To my knowledge, there’s no built-in right-click function. The only way I can think of is to attach a bluetooth mouse.

Ok so I guess you did go through ‘Edit’ menu, damn my screenshot is not right then !

1 Like

Tried a couple of times to connect my bluetooth mouse, but the L5 doesn’t seem to find it. (The mouse is very old, though.)

I checked this out on my pinephone (running mobian). It appears to be up the the individual program if long press summons the drop down menu or not. Long press does nothing in Nemo or Gedit, but it does in Firefox (and there the menu stays open until you click something in it).
Interestingly, pressing the drop down menu key on an external keyboard also did nothing in Nemo but did in Firefox and Gedit. It’s also possible that long press is interpreted as drop down menu key instead of right click.
Using a mouse, (i.e nexdock) everything works as expected.

3 Likes

Might @dos or @dcz be able shed some light on the “long tap to right click” thing and getting to menu? It’s not universal? Can it be made universal behavior? Or option C?

1 Like

i believe that from a mobile friendly personal-computer-in-your-pocket the expectation to permanently delete a file directly from the GUI should be a no go … simply keep the send-to-trash option and if you want to empty the trash you can always empty the trash (manually or you can do it automatically from the settings)

when you are in convergence mode and the OS detects an external keyboard being available it then exposes the ‘permanently-delete’ option in the GUI when R-Click is made or when the file is selected and the SHIFT + Del key combination is pressed … much safer for people new to Linux this way

i can see some accidents happening if it’s the other way around …

I think this belongs to the toolkit. That would be mostly GTK for us. I don’t know what GTK devs think about it.

Since there’s no such thing as a “right click” on a finger-operated display, I don’t think emulation makes sense in the long run.

Are we talking about the same feature? I was referring to opening the menu, not right clicking as such. Tha menu is super useful and part of most apps, and opened with a right click - the long tap to do that is pretty universal alternative in touchscreens.

But to ask it in another way: is the long tap atm a per app feature only? If it would be universal in L5, how/where would that likely be implemented?

Yes, when I say toolkit, this kinda means “per-app”. It’s the app that decides when to open a menu. If you wanted to emulate a right click, you’d have to do that in the compositor.

2 Likes

In 1995, I wanted to consolidate information from several hard drives, to free-up a few hard drives for other use. I asked my sweetheart if I could move some of her files from one drive to another and she said “you can just erase that hard drive”. After I erased and reformatted it, we realized that there was a mis-understanding about which hard drive we were talking about. I had just reformatted her good hard drive with irreplaceable files from her work on it. She was horrified and I was in big trouble with her.

I went down to Fry’s Electronics (back then they were in their heyday), and bought a disk that appeared would reverse the wipe and reformat that I had done. Even I was skeptical about whether or not it would work. I expected it to take an hour or less to complete once I started it. But two days later, it was still running. Late in the evening of the second day it finished and reported that the restoration was complete.

I figured that if we could get back even some of her files, that we would be lucky. I was amazed to find that everything was truly restored. Nothing was lost. We even booted from that drive that I had erased and reformatted just a few days earlier. We were so lucky and she quit being mad at me.

When the recovery tool disk booted, I saw that all it was, was a custom Linux distro that automatically brings up a GUI for some Linux tools immediately after booting. I probably could have done the same thing on my own with the right Live CD if I would have known Linux better at the time. But I didn’t mind paying. All I cared about is that it worked. All I had to do is boot from it and point it at the hard drive and click on “Recover”. That was the first time I realized that Linux could be used with Windows file systems.

1 Like

@dcz An additional feature to add to to-do, perhaps? There can’t be any design requirement that would go against having this, surely.

@amarok Topic reminded me an app that might be of interest, secure deletion and such: BleachBit. Probably doesn’t scale, but if you’re looking for an app to test…

I’m not sure, as I said, putting it in the compositor would be a crutch: what if some other application wants to handle long taps/whatver else itself? And I don’t know what plans GTK has for this. Perhaps best to report it to GTK folks directly.

Your wish is my command!

1 Like

Ah, excellent service! :slight_smile: BB has two modes, hence the root, where it “scrubs under the folds” too. But if it’s not able to take root (should ask for your passwd at startup), I guess it will fail.

I’d be more concerned about UX of L5 as long tap doing something else seems rare - though not out of the realm of possibility. I was thinking more along the lines of having a setting where enabling “long tap = right click” was an option. And it’s not just that: is there any place to set what different gestures do or finetune them (including timing, which may be crucial for folks with limited movements etc)? … and I’m just gonna end this idea here, so as not to hijack this further.

Well, if you look at Android (sorry, no experience with iOS), a long press is not always right-click. It depends on the context. Sometimes it’s right-click, sometimes it’s marking an item for selection, sometimes it’s grabbing an element so it can be dragged around (similar to holding the left mouse button). Perhaps I’m missing a few; those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Ideally, you’d want to stay consistent with what’s already out there. People should not have to relearn how a touch interface works on the basic level when switching phones.

1 Like

Quote:
" if you select Delete from the menu, a file will be deleted without recoverability."

Cultural thing / failure in front of GUI: What else should happen?

This is so rooted, so basic it is based on the bible (OMG!):
Matthew 5:37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Don’t do evil. I could not have expressed better. It just says:

Delete is rm is delete is rm is delete.
Take responsibility for what you do! There is no planet earth(B).

I’m shocked to see how bent and malformed expectations became.
Shall the world turn around $Microsoft like King Louis wanted the sun to circle around his empire?
Click on “factory reset” and climate change is gone?

Then even me rather prefers the bible related to computers …

All my L5 need to say is simply what it does
and only do what it says,
anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

1 Like