Re: RFC: Common desktop-wide paths

["Marc O'Morain" <lists marcomorain com>]

Hi Samuel,

> Am I the only one who does not like the idea?

You do seem to be in the minority from the number of replies so far.
However, the default folders system is not meant to be for everyone.

I accept your point about a work machine - at work important documents and
the like are usually filed in keeping with company policy. In my last job
all files were stored in C:\Perforce\[Group]\[Platform]\[Project Name]\.
Also as you mention if you are working on a project that will contain many
types of files, the default folderset idea does not fit your needs.

Perhaps the proposed GUI that configures the use of folders could have a
preference 'Use the folderset', which if false, sets all the folders' to
$HOME, and the user can do their filing by hand.

> At home, I could maybe live with some of the directory names, but
> because of the large number of "Documents" I would like to have them
> split via multiple directories, so I have "Letters", "Books" and "Other
> Documents" visible right on my desktop.

I accept your point about further catagorising documents. In my personal
experience, the only documents that I deal with at home are letters. On my
laptop I have a subfolder Letters in Documents, and Letters contains
further subfolders, for each recipitant.

On Windows there is a My eBooks photo in My Documents (I think perhaps
Adobe creates this?). Perhaps a 'Books' folder could be added to the list
of major folders. This leads me to another idea which I will discuss
later.

> Thirdly, "Incoming" files are sometimes badly named (or even have
> erroneous content) and I would like to look through them before they are
> sorted into a folder together with other files.

When I used Internet Explorer, I used to download everything to the
desktop. Now that I use Firefox, I have really fallen in love with the
default downloads folder. When I download a file, it is automatically
stored in the Downloads folder, and when the download is complete I open
the Downloads folder and either view the file and delete it, or store it
in a more suitable place. I try to keep my Downloads folder empty.


> So I guess what I am trying to say is that we need a nice and easy way
> to make this more flexible, otherwise it is much too general.

My idea was to have it as basic and as general as possible, but based upon
a set of GConf keys and a GUI to configure them. In this way the default
behaviour should work out of the box for the majority of users.

> One solution already pointed out to solve the I18N issue would be "ln -S
> ~/Music ~/Desktop/Musica/". But this would
>
> a) move us one step further from using $HOME as desktop.

I had the idea of symlinking from an internationalised name to a hidden
default:
~/Desktop/Musica/ -> ~/Desktop/.Music
It makes the whole idea less elegant however. I wonder how many people
actually log in regularily using multiple locales.

> So I would like to see this if it is implemented using gconf keys
> mapping MIME to directory, in combination with well chosen defaults. If
> the gconf key does not exist, a default directory ~/Desktop/Downloads or
> ~/Desktop/Incoming or simply ~/Desktop is used.
>
> That way, you could have the proposed behaviour by default, plus satisfy
> the needs of those who want a more (or less/none) specific
> categorysation.

We are in aggreement here - this is exactly how I would like the system be
set up.

Also, I had the idea overnight of not creating the folders by default, and
leaving it to the application at install-time. Here is a typical example:

By default there is no music folder. The user installs Rhythmbox. Rhymbox
checks to see is the Music folder specified in GConf exists. It does not
exist, so Rhythmbox creates it. The user then installs Sound Juicer. Sound
Juicer checks to see if the Music folder exists. It does, so Sound Juicer
does nothing. This would mean than people who do not have music players
installed do not hav a Music folder.


Best Regards,

Marc O'Morain