Bug 46665

Summary: savebox could be enhanced for multi-directories saves with links
Product: [Applications] kfile Reporter: benji2
Component: generalAssignee: kdelibs bugs <kdelibs-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: nate
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description benji2 2002-08-19 21:25:01 UTC
(*** This bug was imported into bugs.kde.org ***)

Package:           kde
Version:           KDE 3.0.1 
Severity:          wishlist
Installed from:    Unlisted Binary Package
Compiler:          Not Specified
OS:                Linux
OS/Compiler notes: Not Specified

Hi
I'd like to submit a enhancement idea that i got after talking with a
non-technical person. It's a kind of multisave system. Let me explain:
Suppose I'm a geographical reporter. I keep articles from different
dates and from different countries so my home could look like this:

/home/articles/
/home/articles/ByDate/september
/home/articles/ByDate/october 
/home/articles/ByDate/december
                ...
/home/article/ByCountry/France
/home/article/ByCountry/Germany
/home/article/ByCountry/Japan
                ...
Now suppose i want to save an article that i wrote in december about France.
Where do I put it ? The best thing to do is to save it in both directories
(with links) so modifying it in a location affects it on the other location.

Thus a smart way of saving files.  It's a pretty easy thing to do with a 
file manager like Konqueror but for the non-techie people whom i showed this
it still seemed a little long (going from Koffice to Konqueror modify some
file then come back).

What would be great is the possibility in the "save file" dialog to select
several directories (with ctrl for example) but keeps an unique filename.
Then when OK the file would be saved once in multi locations with links.
(Ideally when the two directories are on different partitions the link
is a symlink).
I don't really know if such a behaviour is hard to design and implement
but i think it could be useful.

(Submitted via bugs.kde.org)
Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2009-08-27 02:34:22 UTC
Moving from "kio/kfile" component to "kfile" product, helps sorting out duplicates.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2018-04-11 18:59:11 UTC
I was actually toying with this idea after my non-technical mother had the same problem. However, this is really a job for the file manager, not the save dialog, because there are many circumstances when you might want to do this without saving files. For example, a teacher making a new copy of a directory containing last year's lesson plan; should all the files be blindly duplicated, symlinked, hardlinked, or something else?. What would be really cool is if the files were hardlinked, but changing one would trigger a dialog asking whether you wanted to change all copies of the file, or just this one. Choosing the latter option would break the link and make a new un-linked file with the changes.

So I very much like the idea, but we would need to put a great deal of design work into it if it were ever to be implemented, and it would be in Dolphin, not the save dialog.