Re: local home data directory

[George Farris <george gmsys com>]

On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 15:38, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> 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.

Yes I understand the $XDR_DATA_HOME environment variable.
So I guess the question should have been where should it point to if
$XDR_DATA_HOME isn't set?  $HOME/.local/<appname> or
$HOME/.local/share/<appname> ?

I'm a little confused as to why it would be .local/share or was "share"
meant to be an example only.

-- 
George Farris <george gmsys com>