Why can't we Rename Documents?
As a follow up to File Dialogs Suck, I'd like to point out another problem with saving files from GUI applications. Something as simple as renaming a file, is painful broken.
Imagine I start editing a new text file, then save it, and realise that I've misspelt it. How do I rename it? In almost every application I've used, you can't do it. Really, you can't!
You can do "File->Save As", but this creates ANOTHER document, it does NOT rename the existing one.
Using Gnome makes things even worse, because the Save-As Dialog doesn't let you delete the misspelt file. Nor does it let you launch the File Manager. Do we really expect a Muggle to launch the file manager, navigate to the document's folder, delete the original, and then switch back to the application to do the File->Save As? The end result is lots of duplicate, and misspelt files hanging around confusing the Muggle the next time they open that document.
While writing this, I doubted myself; maybe I'm missing something, maybe things have got better since I last looked at the File menu. So I launched my word processor. It has menu options : Save, Save As and Save a Copy. Still no rename!