Re: Proposal: gnome-user-share

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 15:12 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:

> The argument is that you want reconfigurable names anyway for file
> sharing, or even better something like Dobey has. If that argument is
> accepted then the whole argument about on-disk names is irrelevant. Its
> bunk anyway for this because you don't want consistent on disk names for
> sharing.

Configurable names sound like a good idea for stuff that apps want to
drop in the user's $HOME, right?  Why would apps put anything in your
*personal* directory without letting you pick a name?

The problem with this is that you would get a user interface like the
following.  The very first time a user logs in, he's prompted with

	Welcome to your new GNOME desktop.  Before you can do
	anything, you must configure certain folders.

		Desktop folder:   [Desktop______________]
		Sharing folder:   [Public_______________]
		Autostart folder: [.autostart___________]
		...

	             [Cancel]  [Go on, let me log in, damnit]

I mean, it doesn't have to be exactly like that, but you get the idea.
Even if you don't have such a first-login dialog, Nautilus would ask you
for a folder name the very first time you invoke its "I want to share
some files" command.

The ".autostart" thing is hypothetical, but it's similar to what Windows
and KDE have, and people love that kind of stuff:  drop something into a
magic folder and cool things happen; sharing, autostarting, etc.  Do you
want Nautilus to prompt you for a folder the first time you invoke its
"I want to autostart some programs on login" command?

You can't have those commands in a good, visible place; they have to be
in a menu or something.  People don't know the menus.  In contrast, when
you present a ready-made folder in their face, they are likely to
explore what it is for.

The link Alex posted to Apple's API for customizing folder names is
quite elegant [1], and is something we have needed since ~/Desktop came
about.

Or if you want to make the actual on-disk name configurable, rather than
just what is presented in the user interface, you could use some hooks
to monitor when the user renames that folder.  Tools like Beagle already
monitor large chunks of your file system.

[1] http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Concepts/DisplayNames.html

  Federico