[Bf-committers] Handling of user data.

[Dan McGrath]

Hi,



On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 8:27 AM Ryan Inch via Bf-committers <
bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:

> Dan, That's an interesting suggestion about warning users ahead of time,
> but it isn't the fake users that will get discarded, it's those that
> aren't marked with fake user (and don't have any real users).  What you
> say would probably work for the first time you unlink a data-block though
> :)
>

Ah yes, sorry. I meant the unlinked stuff, not fake users. You know what I
mean ;)


> I too agree that some simple indications would be much better than
> rewriting the garbage collection system and I think that even just
> warning the users and providing a link to documentation would be a huge
> help; I don't think you would even need to include a Manage Data button
> in the first iteration to see a large increase in usability.
>

I suppose the question really comes down to what the exact problem is: the
user being forgetful, or not aware of impending loss of data upon reload.

Dialogs would certainly help in the former case, but in the latter case, I
think a safety net might be more beneficial. As an example, you could have
some form of one time, dismissible dialog that goes into the preferences,
but I'm not sure the concept of updating preferences constantly with
booleans on which tooltips are dismissed would be ideal. Power users would
no doubt be annoyed.

I honestly wasn't going to waste any more of the thread's time on this, but
a thought did cross my mind that I figured I would toss it out there for
the guru's to consider, taken (conceptually) from about every OS out there:
the recycle bin.

The Idea being to put all of the unlinked stuff into some trash can of
sorts, GUI representation I leave to your imagination, that will collect
and save all unlinked objects in it, perhaps even sorted or grouped by
type. From there, you could maybe implicitly save it by default with the
blend file, based on a default preference so that power users could easily
turn it off. Then you just need a button or action to "empty" the trash
can. It would even have the secondary benefit of not requiring a full file
reload to remove the unlinked options (is this already a command yet?),
which I'm sure power users would love.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Take care o/