well-known user folders, a proposal

[Stanislav Brabec]

Alexander Larsson píše v Pá 23. 02. 2007 v 14:25 +0100:
> On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 12:13 +0100, Stanislav Brabec wrote:

> The reason you want to do this by default even if some people get pissed
>is that for a lot of people this is a really nice feature

That's why I would like to see implementation kindly offering Cool New
Directories on first startup, allowing users to review the list, read
more, say "OK" or "No".

> in almost all cases the best default
> directory for a fileselector is "what you used last time"

Yes. The best behavior I can imagine is following:

- If the application used the default directory last time, now it should
  use the _actual_ default directory.
- If the application used any other directory, use what was used last
  time.
- If the application did not save its last time directory, start with
  the actual default directory.

>  Another useful thing is for applications to
> add places to the file selector, so even if rhythmbox starts the
> fileselector in the last opened location there is an easy-to-find
> shortcut to the music dir.

This is what I called "Level 2". To implement this, it's enough to
modify file selector and let it to know somehow, that Rhythmbox is an
application, which should show Music. Either env variables or method
like startup-notification can provide this information from the launcher
to the file selector.

> They could also be used to add places to
> things like file manager and panel menus. 

Yes. I can imagine, that file manager, file selector and panel will have
bookmarks there, and file manager can have special actions associated
with this directory.

> Also, changing cwd automatically like that isn't really a good idea.
> That affects all sorts of things like where coredumps are saved, how
> relative pathnames are resolved, etc.

No it's not ideal, but it's the simplest way, how to force this for
unmodified applications using only one change in application launcher.
That's why I call it "Level 1": Unmodified app, unmodified libs.
This level can be used for emacs or so. Simply by editing its .desktop
file.


And off-topic:

Anjuta defines new (and localized) directory "~/Projects". It can be
included to your proposal for translations and maybe not created by
default.

Directory "Projects" should not contain files, but only directories with
data of particular projects.


We also already have "~/.Trash" as another special directory. I am in
doubt, whether to include it, but I guess that probably not.

-- 
Best Regards / S pozdravem,

Stanislav Brabec
software developer
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