Unifying ~/Desktop

[Havoc Pennington]

<bordoley at msu.edu> writes:
> 
> 1. The home .desktop file used by nautilus is dynamically created so that it
> can be titled "User name's" Home. Personally i wouldn't be too againt just
> calling it Home or Home folder as this would make the gnome-panel Home Folder
> launcher consistant with Home folder on the desktop. (see bug 74906 at b.g.o)
> 

I think this change would be OK.

> 2. The home icon that nautilus creates on the desktop is persistent, eg. users
> can't remove it. How would the change you propose affect this.

Should not affect it, though we may have to write a bit of code to be sure.

I'm thinking we may need a Locked=true desktop file field that makes a
file not deleteable by users.

> 3. Until the new freedesktop icon spec is adopted by nautilus and konqueror,
> how will your proposal affect nautilus's ability to theme the home icon. (Many
> nautilus themes change this icon)

I don't think it will affect it. However I believe we've already
implemented the icon theme spec in both GNOME and KDE, or pretty
close.

> 4. The biggest problem i see with this proposal is trash handling. Nautilus
> and konqueror handle this very differently. Konqueror creates a trash folder
> in the desktop directory in which it stores all trash files. Nautilus creates
> .trash files on the various file systems per users which are than integrated
> by the trash view. Nautilus's trash icon on the desktop is simply a .desktop
> file that launches the trash view. Should nautilus simply not display konq's
> trash folder on the desktop and in the file manager view of the
> desktop folder?

Yeah. I believe we may need some kind of hack here. One idea is that
Nautilus assumes that a directory ~/Desktop/Trash is the trash link
and treats it as such.

> 5. Nautilus also offers the option to use the home dir as the desktop. Granted
> this is an advance feature, any changes to how nautilus handles the desktop
> need to take this preference into account as many users and developers prefer
> using the home dir as the desktop. 
> 

I don't think this breaks, at least not in fundamental ways.

Havoc