Hi,
Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
[...]
i wonder if it would be possible to throw the translations into the .directory
file and keep a set of standard files to copy over in a system location? this
would mean that in addition to checking for .directory and various contents
therein, file browsers (managers, dialogs, etc) would have to check for a
localized version of the Name property.
This sounds like a good idea. It solves the problem of applications
blindly using 'My Documents' on French systems, and also the case of
users belatedly discovering they can configure their systems for French
(i.e. no need to rename 'My Documents' to 'Mes Documents' and deal with
the fallout). It can also be used to use a specific icon (isn't there
already a mechanism for that?).
The only problem is duplicating that .directory file to each user's 'My
Documents' folder.
* It won't get updated when the desktop system gets upgraded so it
will miss the translation fixes and the new translations.
* The desktop system could systematically copy root's .directory file
but then it means the user cannot change it.
* Plus it means you potentially have hundreds or more copies of that
file on big systems.
In fact, it seems to me that there are many places where the desktop
could put union/overlay mounts with copy-on-write semantics to good use.
Here are some examples:
* The user's Desktop is filled with a few icons the when it is created
but then it is never updated (afaik). So if the administrator installs
new packages that provide new desktop icons, existing users don't get
these icons. If the user's ~/Desktop was handled as an overlay over the
reference Desktop directory (e.g. /usr/share/Desktop), new icons would
appear automatically. The overlay mechanism would also handle the
deletion of icons for us, making sure they don't come back at the next
login.
* The same mechanism would make it possible to get the shared
'.directory' file to appear in '~/My Documents' and would also let the
user modify that file (copy-on-write) or delete it.
* Same thing for 'My Pictures', 'My Videos', 'My Tunes', etc.
* It could have been useful with the old KDE/Gnome menuing system
where each folder was represented by a directory containing desktop
files. It would have provided a nice way to handle the user's menu
modifications. With the new XDG menuing system I'm not sure there a way
to make use of such a functionality.
[...]
this would obviously fall apart on the command line, but would work in the
GUI. meh .. sounds like a massive hack =)
The command line would always get 'My Documents' which seems just fine
to me. In fact, ideally it could even be 'mydocs' which would be easier
to use and would dispell any illusion that the directory name is the
same as its display name.
--
Francois Gouget
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
xdg mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
