Base Directory Spec Intended Purpose

[Waldo Bastian]

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On Wednesday 06 August 2003 04:22, Michael Terry wrote:
> Greetings, list.
>
> I have a question about the purpose of the base directory specification.
>   Is it reserved for the use of other XDG specs, or is it something that
> XDG is encouraging independent developers to use as well?

It is primarily aimed at other XDG specs, yes. Those other XDG specs in their 
turn will define a specific use for specific locations expressed in terms of 
the env. vars defined by the base directory specification and independent 
developers are encouraged to use these specific locations defined by these 
other XDG specs.

> That is, is 
> it intended as a general solution to the 'problem' of many hidden
> directories in a user's home directory?

It can be part of a solution for that problem.

For example it may be useful to make a XDG spec (based on the base dir spec)
that defines specific locations where applications can store application- and 
user-specific data / configuration information of the various kinds.

For comparison, KDE uses $KDEHOME/share/config/<Application-Name>rc  to store 
the main configuration information for <Application-Name>, and reserves 
$KDEHOME/share/apps/<Application-Name>/ to store additional data for 
<Application-Name>

For me personally it's not really a priority since KDE provides a good 
solution for KDE applications and since this would be about application-
specific data anyway it doesn't really have an impact on interoperability. 
The value of such spec would mainly lie in keeping the user's home dir neat 
and tidy, which is of course a valuable goal in and of its own.

Cheers,
Waldo
- -- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com
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