Re: [PATCH] Translate the "Templates" folder

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

Hi,

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 08:58 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 18:56 +0200, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> 
> > Basically, we should set up a way for application to register new
> > "shortcuts", instead of directly creating the directories these
> > shortcuts point to; e.g., we could set up ~/.gnome2/nautilus/Templates
> > and present it as "Templates" inside the side pane; this way, the user
> > won't see a "Templates" directory inside his ${HOME}.
> 
> This is imho a very bad idea. Hiding directories and making them more
> magic does not help people, it just confuses them as to where their
> files are and how to easily find them from any app.

"Any app" accessing these directories should use the provided API and
standard; direct access should be exposing an implementation detail -
and it should mean that the application's UI is broken in this respect.

As for hiding directories, we do it all the time: that's what dot-files
and dot-directories are for.  A Templates directory is a "configuration"
directory; you place template files in there in order to let them show
up inside the Templates sub-menu.  If we can access Templates directly,
the user won't notice if those files are in $HOME/Templates,
$HOME/.Templates or $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus/Templates; instead, by
providing a "shortcut hiding" we could set up an infrastructure for
system administrators to create a /var/lib/$HOSTNAME/Templates, which is
exported through NFS/SMB/whatever, and have a network-wide templates
directory.  Right now, there's no way of doing this without using black
magic, or patching Nautilus.  Also, this way we could simply translate
the shortcut file instead of translating the directory.

Believe me, I saw this under Windows: users don't mind if their desktop
is in $VOLUME/Documents and Settings/$USER/Desktop.  They will see just
"Desktop" inside Explorer and access their desktop through it.

>  Also, it exposes
> implementation details to the user since going up from a user-visible
> directory takes you to the ~/.gnome2/nautilus directory that you should
> never need to see.

There's no need to *ever* see it.

We can make .gnome2/nautilus a special folder, like we do for
nautilus-cd-burn, or .Trash; going up from there, we should get back on
Desktop (or $HOME, if desktop-is-home).

Anyway, there's no need for a $HOME/.gnome2/nautilus; the whole point
is: there's no need for having a specific directory for
application-specific places, like Templates, or Music, or Photos.  All
we need is to create shortcuts for them, and show them into Nautilus.
Then, we can place Music under $HOME/.gnome2/rhythmbox, Templates under
$HOME/Templates and Photos under $HOME/Pictures/Photos.


Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi - <ebassi gmail com>
Log: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net