Hi fellow Ubuntians (for want of a better word),

I've been thinking a bit about a little problem I ran into with the "Save
As" dialogue earlier today.  The dialogue offers the possibility to enter
path names into the name field, thereby using the path you enter there to
save your file.  Of course, this assumes you know your way around your
system and know how to use paths.

So on one hand we have the user who is used to Ubuntu, and really just wants
to get that file saved and do it quickly, by entering the path in a second
and hitting return.  On the other, we have the newcomer who saves her
proposal about 24/7 service in her branch as 24/7.odt and gets really
confused about the error she gets, namely:

error accessing 'file:///home/branch-manager/Desktop/24': File not found

In addition to that, saving a file with an invalid relative path actually
allows it to be passed on to the program that does the saving, and often
yields unexpected results.  For example, try saving a web page as "." or
".." in Firefox.  More likely than not, you will get one or more unexpected
errors, the number of which dependant upon the site you are saving and the
location you selected at which to save.

This makes me wonder if somehow the system could handle exceptions in a way
that the user understands, yet allowing for fast navigation between the
folders of the system.  My first impression tells me that one will have to
prevail at the cost of the other but a wise user, Keybuk, in #ubuntu-devel
that directed me to this mailing list aptly pointed out that "a problem
shared is a problem solved."

Lastly, I would like to mention that I'm new to the developer community (in
fact this is my first development-related post, so I'm just out of lurking)
but I'm really impressed about the way this community works through
communication.

Regards,
Friðrik Már
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