Re: Translations of folder names - two proposals

[Géry Debongnie <gdebongn student fsa ucl ac be>]

Kalle Vahlman wrote:

> Just to state my opinion on this madness, you guys are on crack.
>
> You seriously are considering to apply magic glue *twice* to make a
> folder look like something it's not. First at shell level as an ugly
> hack (it won't be pretty until the filesystem supports it directly)
> and then as special cases in the GUI (desktop, home).
>
> Now, in the GUI it makes sense since it is done to achieve special
> things, a desktop, templates and so on. But what can be achieved in
> the shell for this? That's right, the name is translated. Big deal. As
> a bonus, you'll get tons of border cases that break the system
> horribly (when in fact the issue solved is the border case).
>
> What should then be done here?
>
> - Define standard and fixed locations for stuff, in plain english. Not
> because it's the most beautiful language, but because it's the default
> in all computing and most programming languages due to historical
> reasons (bad argument, but makes the most sense). This would be cool
> to be from FDO, but a GNOME standard would suffice (there's no reason
> to be extra friendly to other environments, if standards do not
> exist).
>
> - IF needed, translate the name in the GUI (consistently). Note that
> in most cases there is no need to expose the actual path to the user,
> and as paths are not considered to be a good mental model for users
> anyhow, it should be avoided when possible. Take ~/Music (fictional
> example) for instance, that can be referenced as "the music folder" or
> "musiikkikansio" in the GUI where needed (cd ripper, nautilus,
> bookmarks, filechooser, rhythmbox), but there is no need to know where
> it actually resides when using the files through the GUI.
>
> I personally think that the GUI should abstract the filesystem
> completely from the users view ($HOME is also crap when exposed in the
> GUI) and using standard locations to at least semi-automatically save
> and retrieve stuff without bothering the user about it would be a
> start. It would allow programs to know exactly where to look for files
> and then let the user choose them intelligently (for example by a
> search) instead of browsing, which is a dumb and tiresome operation.
>
> After all, it's not the users job to locate the files, or at least it
> shouldn't be.
>
>  
I second that.  I believe this is the most sane attitude.  Let's apply 
the KISS principle...