Re: RFC: Common desktop-wide paths

[Tristan Buckmaster <tristan buckmaster gmail com>]

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 14:50:31 +0100, Jamie McCracken
<jamiemcc blueyonder co uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-10-02 at 23:39 +1000, Tristan Buckmaster wrote:
> > > The Mime types are hierarchical EG "Audio" which contains subtypes for
> > > individual audio types so in that case you could specify all Audio files
> > > to have a default location of $Home/Desktop/Music.
> >
> > Yes but they don't go far enough to classify something as music or a
> > photo, etc...
> They do with subtypes so Image->Gif could be set up to a Gif Folder
> whilst Image->Bitmap to another etc.

Why would you want a gif or bitmap folder?  More likely you what a 'photos from
my trip to Germany' folder or a 'University Essay' folder.

> >
> > > The advantage of using Mime is that it gives you fine grained control of
> > > what goes where thus making it useful for more advanced users who want
> > > to customise things to a higher degree.
> >
> > You already have this fine grained control with the current system web
> > browsers employ.  If the last saved file of the same mime type went in a
> > particular folder, then you most likely want to put the file in the same folder.
> > Say for example you are saving source code files of a project one by one. At
> > the same time as you are downloading the source files you maybe download
> > some images of penguins and storing them in a directory you made called
> > 'penguins'.  This works great as you only need to point your browser to the
> > right directory twice.  Using the system you desccribed would require the
> > user to point the brower to the correct location everytime and the 'penguins'
> > folder and the project folder are not default folders.
> 
> I would expect it to work as follows: A web browser would offer a choice
> of downloading to default location (for that mime type) or a user
> selectable choice (which would default to the last user selected
> folder). Epiphany already provides such choice via its "Download Link"
> option and "Save Link As" option.

I have just noticed that it seems the browsers have scrapped the
method that they
used to use (The method I described of pointing to the directory last
used to store
a file of the same MIME type) in favour of the simpler method of just
showing the
last directory used store a file (the "Save Link As" option in
Epiphany).  I think an
option to change the "Save Link As" to it's older method would be a
better option
than implementing what you described, as it's less complicated and probably more
effective.  Although I am not sure having this option is all that necessary.