Re: Translations of folder names - two proposals

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

Ok to try and solidify this here is a proposal for how we move ahead
which avoids the concerns about gconf and magic symlinks but uses the
environment. At the same time it allows us to change the rules later.

FDO stuff

	FDO reserves environment variables of the format _FDO_* for FDO usage.
	FDO defines a tiny program called fdo-desktop-path.

	An initial implementation shall be something like:

		#!/bin/sh
		echo $_FDO_DESKTOP

	although an error check would not go amiss.

Gnome

	Gnome implements 
		gnome_standard_folder(FOLDER_DESKTOP);
		gnome_open_in_standard_folder(FOLDER_DESKTOP, "hello.jpg");

	or some similar interfaces. Havoc proposed some too.

Together this implements the environment variable proposal but wraps the
implementation detail. An implementation can trivially use a fixed path.
An implementation in the future could become my dynamic and
sophisticated without breaking existing tools.

I am not sure if "fdo-desktop-path" or "fdo-get-path desktop" would be
better for extension of this over time ?

Alan