Is anyone taking note of this? I believed I used the steps given to
communicate an issue. Where is the best place to discuss this concern?
On 11/2/22 11:23, Jacob wrote:
Hello,
I've just joined the mailing list. My name is Jake Gustafson, known as
Poikilos on GitHub and elsewhere. I have been creating stories,
creature drawings, and comics since I was a child. I started learning
to code when I was 12. If you look at my profile on GitHub
<https://github.com/poikilos> or or a high-level summary on my
StackOverflow profile
<https://stackoverflow.com/users/4541104/poikilos>, you can see my
various contributions in the form of mostly some small python
libraries not yet in PyPi and also several pull requests to existing
projects, as well as assisting with identifying or diagnosing issues
in public-licensed software.
Thanks for allowing me to join the mailing list automatically. I hope
this isn't a distraction from the mailing list if my issue is not
supposed to be here. The website said discussions about XDG should
take place on this mailing list. I hope this is the best place for the
technical issue below, since the issue involves the standard itself
rather than the software, which seems to implement the standard as the
standard stands, from my tests regarding this issue (using
desktop-file-validate).
The standard itself is missing a definition of what key is appropriate
for the path where the Type is Directory. In fact, there doesn't seem
to be any specification of the Directory type in the XDG standard
other than that the extension should be ".directory". In fact, there
seems to be no way to construct such a file in a way
that desktop-file-validate doesn't show an error.
May I propose "Path" could be the key in this case? It seems intuitive.
It may also pave the way for a "File" Type implemented similarly. I
suggest adding that.
I have had several uses for such a feature so I implemented these
features in an alternative standard called blnk
<https://github.com/poikilos/blnk>. If XDG implements the features, I
would change my program to match the standard. The use cases are as
follows:
- I (and various tech channels on YouTube) often install GNU/Linux
systems on old/new computers for relatives to avoid various Windows
issues. Such users don't understand symlinks. Even Mac users don't
usually understand aliases (which they are called there and made easy
to create like on Ubuntu) from what I've seen. They sometimes delete
all of the files from one symlinked directory since they think there
are two copies of everything. Having a shortcut that goes to the
"real" directory is preferable and safer in this case.
- In another case, the directory shortcut can point to a location that
may not always exist. Even some favorite bars or programs simply
"forget" (or hide) a subdirectory of an unmounted drive or remote host
upon loading. This is not clear to the user what is going on. They may
wonder where the shortcut went or what is happening. If there was a
complete .directory file standard, then DEs (maybe via xdg-launch or
some new xdg command that doesn't depend on mimetype) could launch the
file and stderr could say that the Directory is missing or not
accessible. The current workaround is to make an Application shortcut
to a directory, but this is not always advisable. I've heard
recommendations online saying to launch some particular file browser,
whereas xdg-launch would be better. If the .directory spec were
completed then implemented be DEs, there would be a clear answer to
the question and there wouldn't have to be workarounds or handwritten
.desktop files.
- Perhaps DEs could implement following .desktop files in a similar
way to symlinks: to traverse folders while inside of a file/directory
chooser dialog box even. That feature is implemented on Windows, for
example. That would allow people to have shortcuts in an appropriate
place instead of an ever-growing "Favorites" bar in their file
manager. Also, the favorites bar gets reset to nothing upon changing
to a different DE or upon running a different flatpak. I understand
these issues are not the realm of XDG to implement, but having some
sort of complete specification for Type=Directory would allow DEs to
do whatever they want with it and have a clear way to remain
compatible with other DEs in this regard, regardless of whether their
implementation involves my wishlist.
Thank you,
Jake "Poikilos" Gustafson