Re: Special folders in gnome

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 15:23 +0100, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> Le vendredi 13 janvier 2006 �4:56 +0100, Murray Cumming a �it :
> > Yeah, you're going to have huge problems with shell scripts if you
> > multiple possible names for folders, which might change underneath them.
> > I wouldn't trust shell script authors to (know to) always go through a
> > symlink.
> 
> Well, if they don't know it is a symlink, we are almost fine (unless
> they try to rmdir it ;)

Surely it's a problem if they hard-code a path to the translated
directory and then it changes. Or if they have 2 users, using different
languages. The script will only work for one of the users. Worst, it can
break unexpectedly sometime in the future when a) a user changes his
language b) A translator improves the translation.

[snip]

> > By the way, I think Apple translate in the UI (maybe in the Shell too),
> > but not on disk. I'm not sure how that looks when you ssh into an Apple
> > box. Maybe it's a filesytem thing.
> 
> We've just tested here :
> -on disk, names are in english
> -they are translated in the UI, with a icon for each folder.
> -if you rename the folder, icon stays, on disk is renamed but
> applications are still able to access renamed folders without any change
> at all : if you renamed Music into foobar, iTunes doesn't bother and
> still display foobar content.

Even if you rename in the shell? That's a neat trick.

This reminds me of Mac shortcuts that still work when you move the
target.

> > > > But if we encourage translated on-disk folder names then we get multiple
> > > > instances of the same folder when applications hard code the names. This
> > > > is what we experience on Windows, even though the API to avoid this is
> > > > available to all applications.
> > > > 
> > > > It's a lot safer to hope that developers use some API to translate in
> > > > the UI than to hope that developers use some API when installing stuff
> > > > to a path or opening that path.
> > > 
> > > If the API is done right (ie translation is based on the user running
> > > locale, not the hardcoded translation inside the app), it should be a
> > > problem.
> > 
> > But the point is that they won't do it right (they won't use the API or
> > symlinks that you offer). The effect of developers not doing what they
> > are told is worse if you translate filenames than if you translate UIs.
> 
> If it is in the spec, they will be warned. We just need to decide what
> to put in the spec ;)

In both cases it would be in a spec. But the effect of not following the
spec is different in the two cases.

> > > I'm not saying translated on-disk folder are THE solution, but unless we
> > > have a way to have translated folders behaving just like other folders
> > > in all applications, it is not a too bad solution.
> > 
> > We can get almost all applications with a freedesktop spec adopted by
> > GNOME, KDE, and OpenOffice.
> 
> Amem ;)

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com