Re: Templates directory looks pretty bare

[Ryan McDougall <NQG24419 nifty com>]

On Sat, 2004-31-07 at 05:30 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Davyd Madeley">
> 
> > My take on this, is that nautilus shouldn't ship with the templates (same
> > as it doesn't ship with default mime handlers). Applications should
> > register templates with nautilus, so if you write templates, send them
> > upstream to the application authors.
> > 
> > ie. gedit could add a "Create text file" template.  or gnumeric could add
> > a "Create spreadsheet".
> 
> Please see previous threads (and most usefully, the original thread) about
> Templates support for some discussion about why this won't happen. We will
> end up with the same kind of complicated mess we have with menus if we ship
> templates by default and allow applications to 'register' their own. That's
> why only ~/Templates is read, and why it's left entirely up to the user (in
> their home directory), admin or distribution (in /etc/skel).
> 
> - Jeff
> 

I managed to find the original thread with a little bit of googling, but
I wish when people refer you to a thread, they might give you a hint on
how to find it (approx date, name, etc).

I agree with everything Alex said, but I don't agree that the conclusion
is that there should be no system-wide folder, or that the folders
should ship bare. To me its a call to have the Distro and GNOME ship
some sensible defaults.

/usr/skel/templates would only be used when nautilus creates a new ~/
Templates folder. After that gets copied into ~/ the user is free to
delete anything she doesn't use in her own home. I think its easier for
a most users to delete stuff they won't use, than realize what ~/
Templates is for and dream up all sorts of cool ways to save themselves
time.

Since GNOME includes apps for editing certain files, IMO we should ship
those templates. We are responsible for a good user experience as much
as the distros.

I fear that if we leave it bare, it will e the coolest feature 90% of
our users never use.

Cheers,
Ryan