Re: local home data directory

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 07:38, George Farris wrote:
> Just reading over the docs on freedesktop.org.  I see that if a user is
> creating an application that has local data files such as a phonebook
> for example.  Assuming the following:
> 
> Application name - appy
> Data file name - phbk
> 
> This file should be created in $HOME/.local/share/appy/phbk
> 
> Is anyone actually following the freedesktop.org standards with regard
> to these things or did I not understand this correctly?

If applications acted precisely like this they wouldn't be following the
standard (I assume you are talking about the XDG Base Directory
Specification here). Applications following that should be using the
contents of the variables $XDG_DATA_HOME and friends, not hard coding
the paths like $HOME/.local.

As to why it is not used everywhere, it is also important to realise
that that specification is in the "new and not yet widely used"
department. It is an example of trying to specify what could happen
moving forwards, rather than codifying existing standards. Over time,
applications may move to using this standard, but it is not yet in wide
use as you note. That is just software evolution.

"It won't happen overnight, but it will happen" (maybe). :-)

Cheers,
Malcolm