Dear Ubuntu and Evolution Developers, I'm sending this email to the gnome evolution hackers list to see what their thoughts are.
I have noticed a really odd disconnect in gnu/linux with user data which has me a little worried. Some user data is hidden from users in configuration directories. Technically configuration directories denoted by being hidden (suffexed with a '.') are there to hold collections of configuration files for the applications which they serve. But there are plenty of programs using these directories to store the data results as well as configuration. For consideration I present Cheese, a very nice tool for using web-cams to take photos with weird disfiguring effects. The problem as I see it is that Cheese stores each of the photos in it's ~/.cheese directory which makes them hidden from the user. Instead I propose that Cheese use a standard directory (possibly configurable) such as ~/Photographs/Cheese or ~/Documents/Cheese which is accessible to user browsing. Cheese is an excellent example of making user data more accessible to casual file browsing which is not just limited to jpeg images but could just as easily apply to the way Evolution stores emails, addresses, contacts and so on. In these instances the data is always bound up in evolution specific formats inaccessible to casual browsing as well as casual integration (without delving into the EDS API) I'd like data to be available to send in an email, or browse in nautilus (or on a command line) I'd like to be able to open the same jpeg in image viewer and gimp, not just in what ever created or generated them. I'd like to be able to open addresses and copy an event file to my thumb drive. Wouldn't it be good to backup all your files without configs and be sure your not missing emails or bookmarks? In fact the methods we use to store data seems to be along the same lines that certain Windows and Mac programs use to obfuscate and hide data in order to lock users into their products. Do we really need to do this on our gnu/linux systems? Should we instead intend user data to be converted with plugins and export features in every application because of their hidden default outputs? This issue may be interesting to the FDO (freedesktop.org) crowd. It is a very heavy topic that will probably get me a little flaming because it goes against what is currently best practice. Best Regards, Martin Owens _______________________________________________ Evolution-hackers mailing list Evolution-hackers@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers