Re: Structure in $HOME

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> > I claim this is neither reasonable given historical patterns, nor
> > desirable. Hiding the "inner workings" of the computer behind a thin
> > boundary has almost always led to problems. Windows is a clear testament
> > to this, particularly in contrast to the Macintosh.
> 
> Storing things in a structured way below a dot-directory is not really
> equvialent to what windows does I think. But I get your point.

Its almost exactly what Microsoft has done with C:\Windows. Or to give
an even closer example, what Microsoft has done with 
C:\Documents and Settings\username\, which has a whole series of hidden
folders containing settings files, and application data. Hidden folders
in windows are pretty much identical to .directories in Unix.

> > Ideally, every file on the system would be intelligible to normal human
> > users based on its name and location. *nix is waaaaaaay off here,
> > probably further than any other system, but at the very least we could
> > reclaim the home folder for people again.
> 
> I agree with this too. What I disagree with is that it is easier for to
> people to find their bookmarks in mozilla/bookmarks, rather than
> bookmarks/mozilla.

Hm, maybe where we are mis-communicating is in how to deal with data
that should be shared. I feel very strongly that mozilla/bookmarks is
preferable to bookmarks/mozilla, simply because it allows you to get at
all the items related to Mozilla at once without having to poke around a
directory structure (for example, in the Windows registry, application's
settings are often scattered across dozens of folders, and it can be
very hard to clean out an application).

*However* in the case of data that is both shared across
desktop/applications, it could make a lot of sense to have
Bookmarks/Internet, which would be shared by Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon,
etc.

-Seth