File system GUIs ostensibly mimics files in folders, but funny to note that *reordering* is a fundamental verb for physical papers in folders (or in piles on my desk). There’s no way to reorder a list of files in Finder without something silly like adding numbers to the front.
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You can switch to grid view and drag icons around, but that’s a “reposition” verb, not a “reorder” verb, so doing something like “moving a paper to the top of the pile” is surprisingly awkward. (Of course, explicit positions are sometimes useful too!)
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The file system makes this kind of affordance technically challenging. Folders are a bag! How would you even store an ordering portably? You’d probably resort to something like .DS_Store.
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This rant came from wondering: why do I feel like I want a special piece of software to manage my reading lists, or my sheet music? Why not just folders of PDFs? (Never mind the fact that most specialized “read it later” software doesn’t let you reorder the queue!)
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Related:
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i fear and resent scrolling (e.g. scrolling way up to see chat history) b/c i know application developers don't take it seriously as app state
like I'll click on another chat, then back to the chat where I'd scrolled way up, and the app'll have thrown away my scroll position
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File under: everything is trapped in little black rectangles
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Replying to @andy_matuschak
This is a very good point but sidesteps the reason why paper shuffling works so well: you can easily scan each piece of paper. Sure, Explorer & Finder have "quick view" functionality but it can't hold a candle to the information density & ease of scanning of physical paper.
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related related !!
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it feels like a failure of the filesystem whenever i name files 01-file.txt, 02-other-file.png, etc to keep them in order everywhere
like, arranging files in some narrative order should be basic functionality, by dragging icons or drawing arrows between them or /something/
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this problem is also why I try to keep new projects in one file as long as possible
within one file, there's a clear order, and you can scroll around and have a 'spatial' sense of where stuff is
twitter.com/rsnous/status/
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This is the main reason pdf readers suck. The user's state is in many ways the most important thing to keep, and it's treated as disposable.
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This was a requirement in Picasa's folders/albums - we thought ordering was important to narrative so we remembered it. :)
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There was a thing ?yesterday? about the limits of the computer screen (in terms of 'personal knowledge management') and the need for and value of 'peripheral vision'. Think that's related too :-)
(Spent ten minutes looking, can't find the tweet - apols if it was you!)
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I think that was me, yes! :)
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Software interfaces undervalue peripheral vision! (a thread)
My physical space is full of subtle cues. Books I read or bought most recently are lying out. Papers are lying in stacks on my desk, roughly arranged by their relationships.
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It’s like we resist spatiality every step of the way
(I also think positions shouldn’t be in DS_STOREs, but should be an FS primitive)
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Yes! It's especially annoying when the ordering for the view changes - e.g. in finder a folder I'm looking at is sorted by creation timestamp, then when I go to upload something from Chrome it gives me a view that's ordered alphabetically.
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But really the lack of reordering bites me more in GMail. Would love to move things around to group by common topic and order by priority.