Re: Translations of folder names - two proposals

[Damon Chaplin <damon karuna uklinux net>]

On Fri, 2004-12-10 at 13:13, James Henstridge wrote:
> On 10/12/04 14:05, Damon Chaplin wrote:
> 
> >On Fri, 2004-12-10 at 11:36, James Henstridge wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>Like the gconf solution, it isn't clear what a script should do if the 
> >>~/.folders/XXXX symlink or gconf key is missing though.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >We could provide a small utility, e.g.
> >
> > gnome-create-standard-folder "Templates"
> >
> >That would use the same API that we would provide for apps.
> >It could even return the directory pathname, making scripts fairly
> >painless. We could also provide a
> >
> > gnome-get-standard-folder "Templates"
> >
> >that returns the directory pathname or nothing if it doesn't exist.
> >  
> >
> If the script is going to need to use one of these programs if the 
> symlink is missing, then is it ever correct for them to blindly use the 
> ~/.folders/XXXX directories?  If not, then that kills off some of the 
> benefits of the symlink approach.

I don't know. I'm not sure we even need the symlinks if we provide a C
API and utility apps. We just need an FDO standard for storing the
pathnames somewhere.


> In that case, it sounds like we are in the same situation as Windows is: 
> applications must use some special means of looking up the standard 
> directory names, which some fraction of third party developers won't do, 
> which will result in multiple special folders in the user's home 
> directory in different languages.

If we have a capplet for setting special folder paths, at least they
have more visibility than under windows. So developers should at least
be aware that these settings exist.

I think we just need a good document like "Integrating 3rd Party Apps
with GNOME" that covers this as well as things like .desktop files and
MIME types. If 3rd Party developers want to integrate well with GNOME
they will follow it.

Damon