well-known user folders, a proposal

[Alexander Larsson]

On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 17:35 +0100, Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> 
> > This won't work for third party applications.
> 
> Why? Third party application can check, which desktop file defines
> support for intended MIME type and use this directory as fallback.

*Can* check. But most won't. (I'm talking largely about legacy
applications here. They don't even use gtk or qt most of the time.)
Simple translations-on-disk generally "just work" for all applications
with no work whatsoever.

> Third party can even dynamically add directories.

I don't really think applications adding more directories for all users
is a good idea. It should be tightly controlled by
desktops/distros/admins. I'm sure acroread would happily create an
"Adobe" directory just so they can show their logo in more places.

Also, for similar reasons I don't think generic mime-type to directory
mapping is all that good of an idea. We imho only want to add
directories for things that are generally very commonly used (like
digital photos and music).

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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's a sword-wielding guitar-strumming librarian on his last day in the job. 
She's a chain-smoking paranoid magician's assistant descended from a line of 
powerful witches. They fight crime!