Re: $HOME as desktop

["Jason A. Pfeil" <pfeil 10east com>]

Hmmm...

I've been following this with interest for some time and an idea just
cropped up.

What about a completely "virtual" desktop?  There is *no* folder for the
desktop.  Instead, there is a gconf folder under /desktop called
"desktop contents" and in there it contains a set of keys which are
paths to the files (and directories) that GNOME considers to be "on the
desktop".  There could also be a /desktop_sorting folder which contains
one key called sorting_method and then any number of keys which refer to
the files and directories for a non-alphabetical sorting method.

That way, there is no confusion between a physical folder on disk and
the "concept" of having something on the desktop.  Dragging something
from a directory onto the desktop would add that object into the
/desktop gconf folder and put it in the right order for sorting in the
/desktop_sorting folder, if necessary.  This would obviate the need for
worrying about the name of the desktop folder on the filesystem since it
was all internally generated anyway and would be handled by the normal
i18n translations.

Anyway, just an idea to toss out there.

Keep up the good work and the lively debate!

:-)

--Jason

On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 17:56, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 17:25, Yoann Vandoorselaere wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 22:58, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > > I really hesitate to jump in here, but I think it's
> > > worth stating clearly why $HOME as desktop isn't an 
> > > option:
> > > 
> > >  - Upgrades: user upgrades to Red Hat 14.7. Suddenly,
> > >    they have 531 files on their desktop, many of
> > >    which don't fit on the screen. Unless they think
> > >    to "clean up", some of these files may be lost
> > >    forever because they are way off the screen.
> > > 
> > >    I think it's unreasonable to expect users to 
> > >    spend a day cleaning their home directory just
> > >    because they switched to a new version of GNOME.
> > 
> > I'm not really sure what you mean here, but I assume you're talking
> > about a program which would use $HOME as the default behaviour for
> > downloading file.
> > 
> > Why would theses files appear in their home directory ? People get used
> > to behavior of the programs they use. People will get used to $HOME as
> > the desktop. And then, when downloading <insert any distribution name
> > here/>, user will not choose to download it under $HOME.
> > 
> > And even if they did, they would notice the increasing number of files
> > showing up in their home directory, and would probably realize they did
> > something wrong.
> 
> I'm saying, that Linux has somewhere on the order of a million people
> using it on the desktop currently. I'd be pretty sure that most of those
> people have a large number of files in their home directory.
> 
> We have to have a plan to deal with those people upgrading to new
> versions of GNOME.
> 
> > >  - We don't control the other software the user
> > >    runs, we don't control what software they run
> > >    in the past; you may claim that everybody
> > >    should change, but that isn't realistic; looking
> > >    in my home directory.
> > > 
> > >     dcc - xchat is broken
> > >     evolution - evolution is broken
> > >     nsmail - Netscape 4 was broken several years ago
> > >     GNUstep - wmaker was broken when I tried to
> > >               reproduce a bug yesterday
> > >     Mail - various traditionally unixy things are broken
> > >     News - Gnus is broken
> > >     Desktop - KDE is broken
> > > 
> > >    You get the picture. If we made $HOME the desktop   
> > >    we force the user to choose between having useless
> > >    cruft on their desktop and not using other software.
> > 
> > Maybe the right answer would be to contact the authors of theses
> > program, and to involve them in this discussion. Maybe things would go
> > further that way.
> >
> > Maybe, if after this big discussion, most people agree that programs
> > should not create folder in $HOME (at least if they are not hiden) - and
> > even if some outside programers disagree - Users, by asking the
> > programmers to comply to the standard (or to what the mass think), will
> > make him change is mind.
> > 
> > Anyway, I don't believe that the "Everybody is broken, so let's write
> > something borked too" is the good attitude toward solving this problem.
> 
> Hmm, using a subdirectory for the Desktop works well enough for
> everybody else (MacOS/Windows/KDE) that I think it is a *big* stretch to
> call it broken.
> 
> What I'm saying is that using $HOME as the desktop is going to
> cause substantial migration pains for both users and developers
> for relatively minimal gains.
> 
> And if there isn't *agreement* in the Linux/Unix desktop community on
> the subject, than we aren't talking minimal gains, we are
> talking substantial regressions. 
> 
> > >  - Quality user experience depends on consistency;
> > >    not just within GNOME, but for all apps. How 
> > >    are Mozilla, and OpenOffice.org, and the 
> > >    Java file selector, and ... going to get the
> > >    behavior right if GNOME uses ~ and KDE uses Desktop/ ?
> > 
> > Did any KDE developers commented on this issue ? If not, wouldn't it be
> > a good idea to start discussing the issue with them ?
> 
> I'm not sure that expanding the scope of this discussion is
> going to be that useful of a step right now... but if you
> are interested, the first step would probably be to do
> some research and see if the topic has previously come up
> in the past.
> 
> Regards,
>                                               Owen
> 
> 
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-- 
Jason A. Pfeil                        pfeil 10East com
Senior Open Systems Engineer          http://www.10East.com
10East, Inc.                          (904)220-DOCS