Deleted Documents Folder :(

[kovidgoyal]

Keep on trucking, you are doing a grand job of making a fool of yourself.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by bedgar

Why do you bother to do what?

Why do I bother to donate my time and energy to make calibre and release it free for everyone.

Why do I bother to take the time to respond to questions users have, on average 30 times a day.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by bedgar

Why do you bother to do what? Ignore your users all together? That is a great question! Seriously, why is it such a threat to you when people try to make suggestions that will improve the functionality of your software? It makes no sense. Considering at my job we are ALWAYS soliciting peoples feedback on our software. We understand we don't have all the answers yet you seem to think you do.

Seriously, answer me this, why did you not at least acknowledge that you have a bug? You said it will delete ALL files. You said it yourself MULTIPLE times I might add. Yet it doesn't delete them all. So your function is broken. Even if you do not think it is broken in the manner many of us think it is, it is by your own logic not doing what you say it does. is that not a bug? Or is it another "undocumented feature"?

The BUG is between your ears.

YOU ignored a warning message.

I also can't believe someone named their Library 'My Documents'

[bedgar]

Originally Posted by theducks

The BUG is between your ears.

YOU ignored a warning message.

I also can't believe someone named their Library 'My Documents'

The bug is between my ears? He said it will delete all files did he not? Therefore, if all the files ARE NOT deleted wouldn't you consider that a bug? You can hurl all the insults you want. It is not going to phase me because it is counter-productive. I came to here to talk with the creator. Not random people whose only interest is to get facts wrong and hurl insults.

I did not ignore anything, I am not the end-user. I fixed the problem. Second, the library was not called My Documents but she had pointed it to that directory when she first installed and was learning Calibre because that is where all of her books were. Maybe you should read the entire thread before hitting reply.

Haters gonna hate.

[bedgar]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Why do I bother to donate my time and energy to make calibre and release it free for everyone.

Why do I bother to take the time to respond to questions users have, on average 30 times a day.

See this is where you get things wrong my friend. I truly appreciate the time and effort you put into the project. You think someone pointing out a problem means they don't. It is the opposite, if we didn't care, we would not waste time making suggestions. You just need to learn to take a suggestion and not act like someone is insulting your intelligence.

As I said, at the least, your message should say from the hard drive. Someone said that because it says "all file" and because "all files are kept on the hard drive" that it should be assumed hard drive is meant. That logic is flawed because all these files are supposed to be kept in Calibre's DB as well or at least a list of their names in some form of DB or config file etc.

If you want to complain about it being free, then charge for the software. I think it is nearly worth money if I would not have to fear data loss because of ambiguous dialog windows. I said from the beginning that overall we are quite impressed with your software. There is this one issue and you just can't handle it. So again, thanks for your time, and your replies even if they were not as friendly and conversational as I had hoped we could be. But I understand you are not willing to listen anymore.

[kovidgoyal]

Since I apparently have nothing better to do, a small lecture about something called file permissions.

Files on computers have something called file permissions. These permission control what users/programs are allowed to delete what. When a particular file has permissions that prevent a program from deleting it, that program cannot delete it. That is why some files in your My Documents were not deleted.

But from the tone of your posts, I can tell that you aren't here to learn, just to find someone to blame. So this post is entirely wasted.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by bedgar

As I said, at the least, your message should say from the hard drive. Someone said that because it says "all file" and because "all files are kept on the hard drive" that it should be assumed hard drive is meant. That logic is flawed because all these files are supposed to be kept in Calibre's DB as well or at least a list of their names in some form of DB or config file etc.

You say that if the message had read "all files on the hard disk" it would be clear to you. Sure, it would be clear to you, but not everyone thinks like you, stop assuming that what is clear to you must be clear to everyone else. And then it would be longer, which would mean less people would read it and despite you thinking that it makes it clearer, there would still be people who would just ignore it and click OK anyway, and then come and complain about it.

calibre is powerful, it lets you do powerful things. Some of those things can be dangerous, and when they are calibre warns you about them. I am not going to dumb down calibre or make it less usable for its power users in order to protect people from themselves. That is my philosophy, if you dont like it, as I said before, feel free to not use calibre, no one is forcing you to use it.

[bedgar]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Since I apparently have nothing better to do, a small lecture about something called file permissions.

Files on computers have something called file permissions. These permission control what users/programs are allowed to delete what. When a particular file has permissions that prevent a program from deleting it, that program cannot delete it. That is why some files in your My Documents were not deleted.

But from the tone of your posts, I can tell that you aren't here to learn, just to find someone to blame. So this post is entirely wasted.

Again with your assumptions? I am hear to learn as well. I am always willing to learn. You initially ignored that so what am I to assume? Now the only problem is the files are not read only that were not deleted. That was actually the first thing I checked. Like I said though you assume too much because you are sure you know it all. As I mentioned in my first post, which I am starting to wonder if you read it at all, I said she is partly to blame because your warning message would have raised some flags with me because it is unclear, not because I feel I understood it.

The tone in my post is to try and get some real changes here that would be more in line with what one would expect. I am not trying to cause any issue. I want to make Calibre awesome by helping it handle deletion of data in a more effective manner. This change would also relive you from dealing with these kinds of posts. I just wish I could get you to see that I am just trying to help by making suggestions. You want to degrade and demean people by saying things like "a small lecture about something called file permission" as if you're the only person in the world that can understand file permissions! ooooo scary words. I am sorry but acting like everyone is beneath you is not the way to go man. So if you keep this civil we will be fine. Thanks.

[bedgar]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre is powerful, it lets you do powerful things. Some of those things can be dangerous, and when they are calibre warns you about them. I am not going to dumb down calibre or make it less usable for its power users in order to protect people from themselves. That is my philosophy, if you dont like it, as I said before, feel free to not use calibre, no one is forcing you to use it.

I would not expect you to dumb it down. I would just like that dialog if nothing else I suggested works for you that that little box says "from your hard drive not just Calibre" I know I know it is a lot to ask. I am sorry but it would make that dialog less ambiguous and that is a good thing. At that, it would take less work than anything else I suggested. If you even have to say hard drive should be implied, you are doing the message wrong. If it was that crystal clear what objection could people throw out then?

I will leave it at that. If that change at the least is done I would be completely happy. I said that in the first post as well. You just had to read it.

Thank you.

[kovidgoyal]

Let's do a little thought experiment

Suppose I make your change

"All files (not just ebooks) from your hard disk will be permanently deleted from the folder ..."

I will be having this same conversion with a newer version of you a few months down the road. He will come in here, and tell me: "But I though that from the hard disk meant calibre's copy on the harddisk, you better change that message to read "all files (not just ebooks) on your hard disk, not just those that belong to calibre"

And then I will make that change, then a few months later someone else will turn up:

"But that message was too long, I just ignored it, better shorten it to All files (not just ebooks) will be permanently deleted"

And we're back to square one.

The point I am making is that there is no message that will be universally comprehended. If you make one change it becomes clearer to some people and less clear to others. If you add more words, it becomes more effort to read and understand, which means more people will just ignore it.

And finally, perhaps you missed this in one of itmpi's post, but newer versions of calibre do not allow you to use a folder that already has files in ti as your library. So you cannot set your library to My Documents anymore.

[atjnjk]

*Sigh* (just to mimic Kovid), I've read lots of these "delete files accidentally" theads lately (okay, only two threads that I can remember, including this one). Maybe it's best to remove this "Delete Library" thing (I've never use it). Or when clicking "Delete Library", calibre could open a dialog with an option to remove the library's name from calibre's library menu only (and a step by step guide shows users how to delete the library using a file manager). That way, no one will be able to blame calibre deleting their files.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by atjnjk

Or when clicking "Delete Library", calibre could open a dialog with an option to remove the library's name from calibre's library menu only (and a step by step guide shows users how to delete the library using a file manager). That way, no one will be able to blame calibre deleting their files.

That's actually a good idea. I could have it popup a dialog with three options "Remove from calibre", "delete from computer" and cancel.

The delete from computer option will popup the current warning dialog. The "remove from calibre option will simply make calibre forget it ever existed but do nothing else.

There will undoubtedly be some people who will go through two dialogs and still be unaware of what they are doing, but hopefully that number will be much smaller

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The delete from computer option will popup the current warning dialog. The "remove from calibre option will simply make calibre forget it ever existed but do nothing else.

Even better would be to do what atjnjk says. Have the second dialog say "Your library is the folder named 'Precious stuff'. Calibre will now open a window on the containing folder. Delete 'Precious stuff' there if that is really what you want to do" (or some such). When the user presses OK, calibre opens an explorer on the folder containing the library. Don't select anything (if possible) so that pressing the DEL button does nothing.

At this point, the user is looking at a file manager. The user will see what is going to happen. The user must select 'precious stuff' and press the DEL key. The user will get standard platform warning messages. On his/her head be it.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by chaley

Even better would be to do what atjnjk says. Have the second dialog say "Your library is the folder named 'Precious stuff'. Calibre will now open a window on the containing folder. Delete 'Precious stuff' there if that is really what you want to do" (or some such). When the user presses OK, calibre opens an explorer on the folder containing the library. Don't select anything (if possible) so that pressing the DEL button does nothing.

At this point, the user is looking at a file manager. The user will see what is going to happen. The user must select 'precious stuff' and press the DEL key. The user will get standard platform warning messages. On his/her head be it.

While I agree with the latest suggestions about putting it into the hand of the user, of course you know once this is implemented along will come folks who will complain that Calibre should be deleting the files and not forcing the user to do it.

But realistically, I think this is the best solution to the problem, let the user be responsible for removing the files. Something the control freak in me loves, which is why I rarely use any delete actions from any programs.

[kovidgoyal]

Implemented.