Re: A Few Standard Folders [Re: Structure in $HOME]

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Tue, 2003-01-14 at 12:11, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-01-14 at 16:43, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Seth Nickell wrote:
> > 
> > > directory is a folder *actually* called "Giorgio"? Where do you go when
> > > the user goes to "file:///Giorgio"... Also, this takes reading every
> > 
> > To me this sounds like yet another reason why the Nautilus location bar
> > shouldn't be visible by default...
> > 
> 
> No, because it would break as soon as the location bar is made visible.
> It's why folders should have one, real, filesystem name.

Folders of files do belong in the file-system, yes.  Folders of
non-files, things like fonts:/// (which lists system fonts, for good or
bad), no.  Or the control panel, etc.

> 
> > And one other thing: if people start using URI's for every different view
> > mode in nautilus, why shouldn't the URI's themselves be localized?
> 
> Because they are a back-end in GNOME. A GNOME app should be able to
> expect that fonts:/// is the fonts directory without having to do a
> translation lookup. They should have a localised name, and perhaps the
> location bar should display something totally different to the URI ala
> windows.

There, I knew my other suggestion (user-friendly names/titles to uris)
had some more merits to it.  ;-)

Another option for hiding the location bar would be to hide it, or least
abstract it to a drop-down menu, when viewing artificial folders (i.e.,
uris) and show it again when browsing real folders (http/file/etc.).  Of
course, the backend would need to signal which of the two it is... I
don't see the ability to manually type in folder names as much use when
browsing, say, preferences:///

One thing that is problematic with the uris, and could equally be a
problem with normal folders (and often is), is heirarchy.  A problem
with, say, fonts:///, is that it has not relative relation to the rest
of the system.  It's "sectioned off."  even a ~/Fonts makes little
sense, since that doesn't feel like the correct relation.  Fonts feels
more like it would belong under preferences, or the package database.

Even if you hide the URIs (something I strongly support), think of what
the Up/Parent button does.  If you browse a "My Computer" link, and from
there get to Fonts, but then you can't hit Up to get back to the parent
window - what happened?

Having one or two magic URIs with special sub-folders might  be a lot
more user-friendly than twenty unorganized magic URIs.  The same goes
for any standard document folders - organization is key; don't just dump
10 folders in $HOME, and expect them to be useful or well understood.

-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.