File exists dialog confuses me

[bovender]

The “file exsists” dialog confuses me.

I think it’s because the three action buttons are unaware of what the user does with the file name. Also, the default action (invoked by ENTER ) is “Suggest New Name” which adds to my confusion when I have just changed the file name myself.

• When I change the name of the file manually and hit ENTER, a “1” is appended to the file name, but nothing else happens.
• When I change the name of the file, I have to read the button labels and target the one to the right, “Rename”.
• When I change the file name, but am drawn to the middle button “Overwrite” with its icon that draws my attention, the file is overwritten despite me having entered a different name.
• With “Ignore”, the dialog is closed, but the file has not been changed.

The behavior that I (for one) would expect is:

• Show the message informing me about the file name conflict.
• Have a button “Overwrite”, possibly with a visual clue (red color?)
• Once the file name is edited by the user, have the button change its label (or, alternatively, enable a different button and disable the “Overwrite” button)
• Have a “Cancel” button that conveys the same meaning as in other dialogs, i.e. to cancel the current operation.
• “Suggest New Name” should not be the default action when the file name has already been manually edited.

I was going to file a bug report, but I was unsure which component of the KDE Plasma ecosystem to file it against.

I would appreciate to hear thoughts about this issue as well as the bug filing.

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Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.17.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1

[ben2talk]

So apparently there’s a duplication - the filename is highlighted, so you can just type in a name; but if you just hit ‘enter’ (assuming it’s a ‘move’) then the whole operation is cancelled (failsafe).

Overwrite does have some red flashing to show that the file ‘underneath’ will be deleted; which is good.

But sure, why the ‘Rename’?

Alt_O overwrites, as expected.
Alt_r fails, simply entering ‘r’ into the filename… but obviously it’s not going to automatically rename.

[skyfishgoo]

a similar revamp of dolphin’s file conflict dialog box was hashed out not that long ago.

Simplify the file conflict / overwrite dialog (redesign)

Hello. There are some situations when you are trying to copy a file to the location where it already exists. For example, when extracting file from archive to the place where it was already extracted. The overwrite dialog may seem complicated to somebody. The current dialog looks like this (not from ark): [dolphin image exists] and for folders: [dialog write inside folder] The date length is very long. What do you think about redesigning it? For example, we can remove the arrow, reduce…

perhaps kmail needs a similar revamp, for consistency.

[bovender]

My gosh, I did not realize this was specific for KMail, I thought it was a generic KDE Plasma dialog…

I’ll file a bug report so the devs can triage this.