Re: Structure in $HOME

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> > Simple and visible beats complicated and hidden any day of the week.
> > 
> 
> I'd say it should be simple and hidden, apart from things that are
> easily user editable. So a fonts folder might be visible, if that's how
> you install them, but things like mail filters for evolution should stay
> hidden since they are really edited, unless you live in XML, by a GUI.

If its simple there's no point in having it be hidden. So I'll focus on
a single use case because I think its easier this way. Lets talk about
borrowing a friend's laptop for a week. How do you propose I get my mail
filters, existing mail files, and preferably my server configurations
onto the new computer? Add a menu entry or a button for saving mail
filters somewhere? Then exporting my mail to a file and then copying
that file?

> > > Installing fonts and themes should have a reasonable
> > > GUI.
> > 
> > Guess what the most reasonable "GUI" is for installing fonts and themes?
> > Its already been developed, its called a "file manager". ;-)
> > 
> 
> We have fonts:///. We could implement other user-installable items in a
> similar way - themes:/// for example. It has the advantage that you can
> merge several directories into one vfolder, which is the case with fonts
> and themes (system wide + user installed).

And how do you propose that users find about fonts:///? If you're going
to put links somewhere, you might as well just have a directory. Its
simpler, its less error prone, and its easier to develop a conceptual
model of. At least Nils (Sun usability engineer) and I have been fuming
about the URIs. They can't be easily discovered, and they're relatively
complex. They're not a solution, they're a problem.

> But this should be done one, right, way, not by being implemented 6
> different ways with 6! ways to break it. I don't know what the right way
> is.

The right way is the filesystem. It already exists, its already user
navigable. Why invent new ways that have to be discovered?

-Seth