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- Hacker News
- But I thought everything is a file in *nix OSs?
- Maybe 40 years ago.by ghostly_s
- That's not true; most of them don't represent network interfaces as files for instance. Plan-9 gets closest i think, and it's an outlier
- The true file was you, the user, all along.by failbuffer
- Back in the days all the things you would create using the File-menu would be files, because what else would it be???
A benefit of that system was that all documents and data could be easily treated as files - and moved organized as you pleased.
Somewhere along the line someone clearly decided that this was too simple and made storage opaque - and now you never know where anything is stored - and how or where to organize it.
I'm not sure I consider that an improvement.
by josteink - > "File" – You could argue that Items are files, but are they? You import and export files, ok, but what am I actually importing and exporting? Right, passwords!
This seems really weak. What's the benefit to the user of changing "the menu for saving and editing items" on a per app basis?
by nemomarx - “Saving and Editing” is pretty big for a menu title. But it is more applicable than “File”.
Most apps don’t deal with Files as the controlling metaphor.
Word would do well so call it “Documents”
by drfloyd51 - The nomenclature is largely derived from history. We called it that, so we continue to call it that. While I think changing it is possible, changing it to something new across many applications does more harm than good. We all understand that a floppy disk means save, a camera shutter sound means a picture has been taken, etc. The brain is good at associations based on past experience. Especially for those that are less tech-savvy, this is a god-sent. I like the core concept the writer here has in mind, but I think it fights against built-in brain conventions too much.by tygon
- Any imports and exports are going to involve external files in almost every case. This is an attention grabbing headline that ignores the value of semantic consistency across applications. Everyone understands that the File menu is about doing things that will entail interactions with the underlying file system and that it's not real until you save it. We're not better off by putting these more or less similar functions under menus titled 'Picture', 'Document', 'Project', 'Song' etc.by anigbrowl
- Great satire, but how are you going to prevent some UX person at Apple from thinking this is good idea?by archonis
- I don't think it's satire, and I'm not sure it's not a good idea
- It's a real Chesterton's fence situation. There's a lot of latent information contained in a tradition of calling the first menu item "File" including expectations around what can be found there.
You could also say it pierced the metaphor and no longer refers to files on a computer, but to the concept of filing that computer files were named after.
by quirkot - Pierced the metaphor - elegant.
- I understand the complaint but a lot of these suggested improvements aren't great either, especially the ones that are close to the name of the app and so would be right next to the app name which is itself a menu header. "Password" right next to "1Password" and "Automation" right next to "Automator" would drive me batty.
Maybe the real fix is to consider if you need a File menu at all, and whether most of what has been shoved in there should go under the app name menu bar item instead.
by Analemma_ - It's an interesting point, but I think the benefit of having actions related to the main object(s) that each application deals with in a standardized place that people expect ("File") outweighs the cognitive load of needing to figure out where those actions might be in every single program.by keito
- Applications that don’t use the “File, Edit, View, [App Specific Menus], Window, Help” structure are really weird to use.
Example: a bunch of JRE apps on OS X. Circa mid-2010s, many didn’t follow the standard menu layout and were a little jarring (pun intended) and unsettling to use when you tried to navigate features.
by xattt - Yes. It’s all about consistency and user expectations.
Apple guidelines for example, which have been in place for 40ish years:
> Best practices: Support the default system-defined menus and their ordering. People expect to find menus and menu items in an order they’re familiar with. In many cases, the system implements the functionality of standard menu items so you don’t have to. For example, when people select text in a standard text field, the system makes the Edit > Copy menu item available.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
by ano-ther - - Notes: note
- Messages: message
- Passwords: password
- Reminders: reminder
[...]
Most of propositions are restatement of the app name or theme thereof, and thus do not seem to be very helpful (everything in a notes app has to do with "notes" one way or another). Plus, having naming conventions change per app is confusing. The "file" menu is usually about "(primary) actions" and "I/O", so I would rename all of this as "actions". However, "file menu" has been associated with these kind of actions, and it is fair to consider a liberal interpretation of the word broadly referring to organisation of data (wherever this lies) and creation of new data structures within the app (not just filesystem level).
by freehorse - Or maybe… put the file options in the App’s Menu. And only use file, it is files.
Notes New Note New Folder Quit Hide
by drfloyd51 - That's how language works. Eavesdropping once referred to water dropping off the eaves of a roof. There is mostly no "log" that "logging in" writes to. The menu itself has nothing to do with food or eating. Is the meaning clear to contemporary readers or listeners? Yes.by yodon
- > There is mostly no "log" that "logging in" writes to.
Um, there is, actually.
On the etymological front, "log" was originally an actual wooden log, dragged behind a ship. It then became the book in which measurements of the log's speed were entered.
The UCLA Computer Club had a log -- a book with dated entries. Someone augmented that with a wooden log ... an intricate culture developed around this pairing. Traces of this are preserved: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_69051...
(That drawing is a pretty good representation of the actual log. And there's another memorialized pun: MUS stood for machine unit second, which was the computing center measurement unit -- the Computer Club had a quota for submitted jobs [card decks].)
by jibal - Etymological fallacy: https://www.logicalfallacies.org/etymological-fallacy.htmlby jerf
- I once heard a non-english speaker say "logining", and that made so much more sense than "logging in".by DonHopkins
- This use of "logging" comes from the "logbook", a book recording what happened on a ship, which was called that because a literal log (i.e. part of a tree) attached to a rope was used to measure the ship's speed.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logbook_(nautical)
In the modern computing context, "logging in" does involve adding entries to a kind of (digital) record-keeping tool.
by jacobolus - Contrapoint: your application isn't special enough to break patterns.
Opening a calendar application, clicking on the "Event" menu, and being given options to make a new calendar makes as much sense as opening the "File" menu and seeing the same options.
If you split it up so any menu item that verbs a noun, had a top level menu named by that noun, you'd end up with New/Delete/etc actions being split into many menus, which feels just as wrong.
"File" works because of inertia, and people have a feeling of what should be in there:
It's vaguely related to the file/container you're looking at, but I wouldn't even say that's hugely important to most people's use of the file menu. It just has to have those things in it because honestly, it's pretty consistent. Other than a few examples in the article (Find My with it's always-disabled options, Reeder clearly having already moved all of it's menus into Account/Subscription/Item nouns) the file menu lines up with what I expect to be in it. Maybe that's me stuck inside my own bubble?- new thing - save thing - copy thing - open another thing - rename thing - send this thing somewhere - import a thing in another format/export thing in another format - close thing, but don't quit, send me to some start screen pleaseby graypegg - The example you're giving is for an application that operates on files. In that case, naming the menu "Files" obviously makes sense.
But the obvious example of what op is talking about is Pidgin, an instant messenger. The first menu is called "Conversations". It has actions for operating on conversations. The application can't open files, or save files. At least not in the same sense as Notepad, Paint, Audacity, etc.
by WhyNotHugo