Re: volumes mark 2

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 04:06, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Alexander Larsson">
> 
> > I'd like to propose we use a model that Dave calls desktop-as-home. In
> > this model all the files the user normally handles (written documents,
> > downloaded files, etc) are stored inside the desktop (typically in
> > subdirectories reachable directly from the desktop), much as if the
> > desktop were the actual homedir.
> > 
> > There would be no home icon on the desktop, and the file selector and
> > other things should default to the Desktop for loading and saving files.
> > (Technically this is easily accomplished by starting apps with ~/Desktop
> > as the current working directory.)
> 
> A very thorough -1.
> 
> This sounds like a cheap way of getting out of any responsibility for
> handling the home directory sanely (and fixing bugs in other software that
> doesn't), and overloads the concept of the Desktop directory. I'm really
> grasping at straws to figure out why this proposal has any advantages at
> all. It basically transfers some of the problems of home-as-desktop to the
> Desktop directory. Why would we do that?
> 

100% agreed. That's exactly what I was trying to point out in my other
mail.

> Windows doesn't do this. It has a settings directory for users, which
> contains Desktop and My Documents, which are generally referred to magically
> (non-file links on the desktop, buttons in the file selector, etc).
> 
> Mac OS X doesn't do this. It has a homedir and skel-generated folders
> underneath, such as Documents, Music, Movies and Desktop.

This is exactly what I was proposing.
UNIX concept of $home is nice and clean and it's not going away even if
we hide stuff into Desktop.
IMHO all that we have to do is to provide some sane defaults creating
~/Documents, ~/Images, etc and put links to them on the deskop (and
maybe also in the file selector)

ciao
	paolo