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Modernizing the Save Icon?
floppy-less asks: "In nearly every modern GUI, the floppy disk icon is used to symbolize saving files. With the fate of floppy disks becoming apparent, what will become of the esteemed 'Save to Disk' icon? Will it become a CD-R? a hard drive? a portrait of Jesus?"
The 3.5" variety just happen to be covered by a plastic exoskeleton and a metal access door. If you take apart one of these and one of the soft covered 5.25" floppies, the media are essentially the same.
I've already seen a few programs (though I can't find any examples now that I look) that have a folder with an arrow pointing into it for "save" and out of it for "open". I think that's fairly intuitive.
Many people already do not know what the floppy disk save icon is - I've heard at least two people say "click on the little TV to save".
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
As much as I wish it were, the floppy is a device that simply refuses to die.
I went for three years without using a Floppy and finally just broke down and bought a USB floppy drive. There is just no easier way to flash a bios and make a backup.
Floppy disks are well suited to their current day task of saving small files and flashing the bios.
This coming from a person who uses a Thumbdrive, DVD-RW, or a Archos 20GB hdd to transport files.
Gee, I was expecting ^X from a pico fan like you. Have you finally seen the light?
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
I assume you're asking from a UI perspective, rather than asking what the actual reason is, and on that level, I agree - it doesn't make sense if you approach vi as a newbie. The Vi Way(tm) is a very learned skill.
As far as the actual question of _why_ there are colon commands, it has to do with the fact that originally, vi was built on top of ed (and was written by Bill Joy). ed was a line oriented, rather than screen oriented, editor, and used the notion of command-vs-insert mode that lives on in vi was central to using it.
vi wanted to be Visual, added motion commands to command mode, etc, and kept the command/insert mode distinction. But many useful functions lived on in the underlying ed, so a sequence was needed for entering "ed mode". Thus, enter command mode, hit a colon, and tell ed to operate on your text.
Like most things in vi, it makes sense, once vi has corrupted your thought process sufficiently. (I'm ruined - I sometimes use a Mac, and when finishing editing a file, always end up inserting ZZ, cursing, deleting that, and then saving it the way God^H^H^HJobs intended.) I came at unix from an administration perspective, and so emacs never had much of a chance with me, because I only seem to have room for one editor in my brain, and as an admin, that had better be vi. If you've ever tried to bring up a machine that lost /usr, you know why.
I forget what 8 was for.
Oh! yeah, economical my arse.
;) more $0.02
A blank CD-RW costs $0.90 (AUD) or so, a blank floppy costs about $1.10. The CD not only holds better than 400 Floppies worth of data, it is cheaper to boot. So, explain to me how the floppy is economical.. particularly since the floppy *might* survive a couple of hundred rewrites and the CD-RW is good for 10k or so.
err!
jak
Such ignorance begs to be corrected.
Read John 10:11 in which Jesus says: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." He says again in verse 14: "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me." That is merely a small portion of that passage. The passage is entitled "The Shepherd and His Flock." Almost the whole chapter of John 10 deals with Jesus and sheep.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
The sibling (ScottSpeaks!) hits the nail on the head that the floppy actually lacks compatibility with many modern systems. Who cares if it works in an ancient one if it doesn't work in your main system, which is usually involved in every important file transfer. There's no floppy drive in my PowerBook (and I'd be pissed if there was one, because that's extra, useless weight and bulk).
...write-on-the-fly CD-RW, USB flash sticks or ZIP disks, are severely outnumbered and handicapped by the competition among various vendors trying to impose their own proprietary products.
> Yet no one seems to really be able to offer something as good in return...
It's called the Internet. I don't even hang out with anyone on dial-up, let alone completely non-Internet-enabled so even the roundabout method of e-mailing a file attachment works like a charm, especially on tiny, sub-1.4MB files like those that fit on a floppy. Ten seconds.
And if you say "what if that computer's net connection is disabled and it needs to be booted/repaired/given a file and a floppy drive is all it has..." remember my original point, that a floppy (and perhaps a USB floppy drive if your other computers are all modern) belongs in your repair kit, not in every computer made. EDO RAM falls in this same category.
>
I haven't noticed this problem...my replacement was the USB sticks, and I also haven't really found a non-compatible computer recently. If you're going to be dealing with computer so obsolete that it has no USB ports, well then, either it's yours (upgrade!) or it's a special occasion (in which case burning a CD would be cheaper (50 were US$8 the last spindle I bought), faster on both ends (floppies are dog slow, although I spotted a "2x" USB floppy drive the other day at work), and worth the five seconds to fire up Nero.
Oh, but don't ever plug a non-write-protected USB key into an XBOX (while running its non-hacked OS). It will say "There was a problem with a memory card. It has been erased." Ouch.