Re: Structure in $HOME

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> I don't agree that it should be unhidden though; I hate the way
> evolution stores its data in an unhidden directory. A user shouldn't

Oh, I should mention that I hate Evolution storing its mail in an
unhidden directory too. If every app did that, home directories would be
a litter box. Plus, I don't access ~/evolution nearly enough to justify
always having a folder there.

On the other hand, I would probably be more annoyed if I couldn't find
where Evolution stored its mail, filters, etc. If you aren't already
familiar with Unix, and know to turn on display of hidden folders, and
know that the convention is to store stuff in ~/.applicationname, it
could be very hard to find your Evolution data.

So what's the compromise? The compromise is to have a *single* visible
folder that would contain all the sorts of data that make people like
Evolution or old-skool Nautilus want to have visible folders. A single
folder for all this sort of data is not so high a penalty, and it makes
all this data (plus preferences, and user installable things like fonts)
explorable and findable. Its a simple and elegant interface.

-Seth