Re: Major change in desktop handling

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2003-05-16 at 06:59, Manuel Clos wrote:
> Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:
> > Things that would be nice to have still:
> > 
> >       * A desktop button in the file selector, as well as a Home button.
> >         We really do need a good file selector with bookmarks and
> >         gnome-vfs support. The gtk filesel is not that bad, but it just
> >         lacks everything but the very basic functionality.
> 
> Two buttons when we can go with just one (using $HOME as desktop)??? 
> This doesn't help to make a simpler, cleaner, gnome desktop.

The thing is, they are separate. One is where my files go.  One is my
workspace.  I don't want all my old stuff cluttered on my workspace. 
(Desktop)

> 
> >       * Even more speed for Nautilus, this has improved dramatically and
> >         the slowness was one of the reasons I know that drove me to find
> >         solutions to find my files faster. But still, under moderate
> 
> Find files faster? I can't imagine a faster way to find my files than 
> having them in front of me. I can't also understand why people insist in 
> having two different locations for something unique, which force two 
> buttons on file selectors. In the old gnome1 days, my $HOME was a crap. 
> Now, with desktop = $HOME, everything is cleaned up. It forces you to 
> clean up things.

I believed that too.  Except, I can't clean up a lot of stuff.  I can't
get rid of ~/public_html.  I can't get rid of ~/RealOne.  I can't get
rid of ~/evolution.  I have several directories I use only for coding,
and never ever have any reason to access using GNOME (I code in a
terminal w/ ViM), but they have to be on my desktop somewhere.  (As I'm
still using $HOME.)  And like I said in a previous mail, a lot of
systems have ~/tmp or ~/mnt (both of which I've had and needed) or even
~/bin and so on.

With ~/Desktop, only what I want on the desktop is on the desktop.  In
$HOME, all the UNIX noise is there too.

> 
> If we are going to let users crap the $HOME dir, and have a tidy 
> desktop, then PLEASE, remove the $HOME button from everywhere. It does 
> not make any sense.

Except that you have to be able to get to it...

As a point that all $HOME dirs will be crap, I think this is more the
person.  You say that using $HOME as desktop made it clean; actually, it
just forced you to have good habits.  The folders on your desktop
probably weren't much better off.  Compare that to my system where it's
always been fairly clean - all I did when I moved to $HOME as desktop is
rename the folders to have a leading capital, to look prettier.  Because
I organize everything from the start.  ~,^  (Probably why I like the
NeXTStep file heirarchy so much more than unix.... ;-)

> 
> >         system load opening folders can get slow. I guess this is
> >         unavoidable too, but it still sucks to be the user at that
> >         point.
> > 
>