Re: RFC: Common desktop-wide paths

[Anand Kumria <wildfire progsoc org>]

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 02:28:20 +0100, Marc O'Morain wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> This topic has been covered before, but no conclusion was made.
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-January/msg00273.html
> 
> The original proposal was to define a set of folders for storing files
> created by the average desktop PC user. In my case these folders are
> {Documents, Downloads, Photos, Music, Video}. I believe that this common
> folderset would help the end-user to store and mange files more easily,
> and would promote continuity across the desktop.

[snip]

> The original proposal suggested creating the folderset in $HOME:
> $HOME/Documents
> $HOME/Downloads
> $HOME/Photos

$Home/Pictures, for image editing (e.g. gimp, etc.) seem to be more
logical. All photos are pictures but not all pictures are photos is what
I'm thinking.

> $HOME/Music
> $HOME/Video
> 
> The two main issues raised with this idea were:
> - People do not want clutter in $HOME
> - The folderset must be localised
> 
[snip]
> To solve the localisation issue, I propose that these folders are created
> in the language that the user first logs in using. If the user
> subsequently decides to change locale, the Gnome System Tools module
> should be able to rename the old folders to the current locale's
> translation.

Why not instead create the folders in $HOME with LANG=C and have the
$HOME/Desktop/<folder> be a symlink in the current locale of the user?

That has advantages - people performing support can "know" where pictures
are stored. Whereas users can have those folders presented in their
preferred language.

For example:
$HOME/Desktop/Abbildung is a symlink to $HOME/Pictures 
or that
$HOME/Desktop/Musique is a symlink to $HOME/Music

Regards,
Anand

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