Re: volumes mark 2

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 14:56, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 14:41, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > The hard part about such directories like this is that they need to be
> > translated, and the apps using them need to find them, but the apps
> > may be running in different locales etc. Furthermore, it would be nice
> > if the directories could be renamed and things would still work. One
> > way this could be done is to place a ".docdir" file in
> > ~/Desktop/Documents, and look for that when locating the
> > directory.
> 
> 	I must confess to being slightly confused about what is proposed; here.
> What does the ~/Desktop/Documents/.docfile contain (if anything), and
> how is it located ? Does this entail doing a stat inside each potential
> 'Dokumants' or whatever sub-directory ?

Basically, yeah. The file is empty and just notifies that the directory
is the docdir. It requires a readdir() + a stat() per subdirectory to
locate, but that allows you to cache the result forever, since its very
easy to verify if the cache is up to date.

Might be a good idea, might not. It was just an idea.

> 	Is it sensible (from a multi-lingual sysadmin POV) to have a static
> ~/Documents or whatever - then translate that by various magic (perhaps
> via the metafile mechanism ?) [1]. Of course - that relies on
> retro-fitting a suitably powerful file-selector to all interesting
> applications to get a uniform feel; but this is surely not such a
> difficult problem for OO.o, mozilla, evo, etc.

Magic folders are ok as long as they are magic enough. If they ever fail
to be magic (say, when using acroread or something), users will be
really confused.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a benighted soccer-playing paranormal investigator who knows the secret 
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