Re: Translations of folder names - two proposals

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Sad, 2004-12-11 at 18:06, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> the way the user believes it works need not have anything to do with how
> it really works. Alan is saying that we can't "lie" to the user, they
> have to see how it really works. (Which, ad absurdum, means we need to
> hand them an assembler... 

I don't know why you are obsessed with arguing for your pet solution at
any cost but misrepresenting conflicting views is not helpful.

> Or an even better possibility for script friendliness: "just use
> $HOME/Desktop"

That would only strike someone who uses an English language desktop as a
solution or friendly. But let us disect your proposal.

	$HOME/desktop

What is $HOME. $HOME is an environment variable indicating where the
user file store is found. It is stored in a database of undefined format
(traditionally flat file) and expanded by the script.  The rest of us
are arguing for

	$DESKTOP

which works the same way as $HOME/desktop but has the $HOME problem of
changing home directory path live. That isn't a problem most people hit
and we accept the same for $LANG but people moan about that.

	$(get-desktop-path)

is another similar shell scripting form that allows dynamic adjustment.

So if you are happy with $HOME/Desktop, please explain why you are
unhappy with $DESKTOP when this is relying on the same principles but
adding support for non English users.

Alan