[Nautilus-list] Anonymous files

[Jonas De Vuyst <jonas devuyst advalvas be>]

Hi, 

Since Nautilus shows previews of images and text (and more to be expected in
the future?) the need for filenames has decreased. That is why I'd like to
suggest anonymous files, these would be files for which no filename was
displayed.

I imagine this being useful for people that have a digital camera, I assume
those files get useless names now anyway. Also I would use it myself for
storing notes on the desktop, I would finally be able to get rid of foo.txt,
bar.txt, etc..

If something like this was implemented I would suggest having the filenames of
anonymous files start with a ~ and followed by some random number. I suggest
the ~ prefix because this is already used as a backup suffix and is thus
already a special character.

Extra logic would of course have to be implemented for when moving, copying or
linking to an anonymous file, else you might turn up with filenames like "Copy
of ~879645" or you might get an overwrite/rename/cancel dialog. Also the
rename menu item would have to be called Set Name for anonymous files, the
properties dialog would have to modified as well. When we get a new save
dialog it would also have to be made to handle nameless files.

For anonymous files I could think of only one problem, it would not be
possible to change the extension. The only solutions I could think of are to
have the real filename show up when choosing to set a filename or to have the
real name show up in the properties dialog. Both are ugly IMO.

So, how would others feel about such a feature?

PS: I noticed that Bugzilla is down, is there a move to the Gnome Bugzilla
perhaps?

- Jonas