Re: [Usability]The messy world of applications files

[Nils Pedersen <n p sun com>]

snickell stanford edu wrote:
> 
> Quoting "S. Boucher" <stephane boucher videotron ca>:
> 
> > Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> >
> > >Gnome's futuresque solution to this issue is called "gconf", an xml
> > >database stored in ~/.gconf/ .
> > >
> > Except that this doesn't seem to address the issue of config vs
> > personal
> > data. (e.g. mouse preferences/menus vs contact list/mail archive).
> >
> > Also, it isn't likely at all that all applications writers will rush
> > to
> > use this.
> >
> > What I'm talking about is asking apps writers to seperate config vs
> > personal data, and make it obvious for the user how to backup
> > things.
> >
> > ...But I'll have to read more about gconf.
> 
> I agree with this, we need to make the distinction between preferences
> and personal data clear, and particularly for personal data it needs to
> be easy to find for backup purposes (and preferably standardized).
> Having visible folders per-application-with-user-data in the home
> directory seems like a bad idea, but having a single folder that all
> GNOME applications use might be workable. This does entail a
> responsibility on developer's part to only put sensible
> user-understandable files in that directory. Cryptic short names and the
> like are right out ;-)

.file and .directory "pollution" in $HOME came up at ARC review :)

Maybe we could do something at the freedesktop.org level, like have 
everything below a .xdg directory?

Nils