Re: [Nautilus-list] Anonymous files

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On Friday, May 25, 2001, at 06:14  AM, Jonas De Vuyst wrote:

> 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.

At first glance, the idea seems OK, albeit not compelling, to me.

One strike against it is that having yet another special rule that's known 
only to tools that are "in the know" could be another opportunity to have 
a system look like it's ragged, as tools that don't know the files are 
anonymous keep showing file names for them.

> 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.

This part of the proposal is not so good. Shells already use a leading ~ 
character to mean "home directory". So "~darin" means "darin's home 
directory", although "./~darin" does mean "a file named ~darin". Also, I 
don't agree that the ~ suffix means that ~ is "already a special character"
 and available for reserved use. If I was designing this feature, I would 
name anonymous files something that's clear to someone who sees the file 
name, perhaps "anonymous-file-<xxx>".

> 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.

Implementing this part in any one program would be really easy, once the 
concept is clear.

    -- Darin