Re: Directories/Files

[Geoff Reedy <vader21 imsa edu>]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 05:26:40PM +0100, Michael ROGERS <M.Rogers@cs.ucl.ac.uk> said
> 
> I think we can add this to Gnome without messing around with the underlying 
> OS - just give the feature a name that makes it clear the labels are 
> shortcuts, not actual pathnames. Something like "Quick links". Then users 
> won't expect them to appear in the shell, emacs, KDE etc - they'll just be 
> a convenient feature of Gnome file selectors and file managers.
> 

I was thinking about a way to implement this sort of thing and make it
useable in more than just GNOME programs.  Here goes...

Each user could have a directory in their homedirectory called Favorites or
something like that.  It could be a hidden directory but keeping it visible
will make it easier to get to them from other applications (keep reading to
figure out what I'm talking about)

In this directory there will be any number of symlinks of the format <alias>:
(any other separator besides : would do, but since that is what is being
talked about I used that) pointing to some place like /mnt/cdrom.  Alias
would be anything that the user chooses to call it. Ideally the first time
they log into gnome, or some other desktop environment some useful defaults
would be created.

cdpath variables in shells (most shells have this: bash, zsh, tcsh, pdksh)
should be set up to look in ~/Favorites (this could be a default in linux
distributions, or the sysadmin that installs GNOME should do that) so that
way regardless of where the user was in the filesystem and the were using a
terminal window 'cd home:' would get them to their homedirectory, 'cd cdrom:'
would get to the cd, hopefully some soft of automounting would be implemnted,
but that is outside the scope of GNOME.  

In GNOME programs and other applications that wish to be super-smart about
this can read the Favorites directory and present a list of favorites in some
other fashion, such as the combo box that has been suggested before.

Also in non-GNOME programs the Favorites directory will show up along with
the rest of the subdirectories of the user's home directory (presuming that
the apps fileselector starts there).  The user would likely think (as long as
the alias: stuff was referred to as favorites or whatever the directory is
named) that they would find their favorites in their, enter the directory
(provided they knew how) and be able to chase any of their favorites.

There should be some sort of utility for managing these favorites, or
shortcuts or whatever name is decided upon so that users don't have to know
about symlinks to create their own shortcuts.  The only large problem is
localization of the name of the folder, since obviously favorites is not
going to be very meaningful to someone who only knows swedish.

I think I got it all, but if I realize I forgot something I'll follow up on
it.  Time for me to go to dinner, let me know what you all think about this.

-- 
Geoffrey Reedy                                       vader21@imsa.edu

"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1.  "You will never find a more
wretched hive of bugs and flamers.  We must be cautious."
				-- DECWARS