[RFC] "Documents Folder" icon in "system:/"

[James Richard Tyrer]

Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 August 2005 08:58, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> 
>> You need to be more realistic.  Yes, this is part of the
>> engineering mind set.  You can't change the boundary conditions of
>> a problem no matter how much you would like to.
> 
> we certainly can change those boundary conditions for KDE software.
> and we can also help lead the way for others by doing so. we aren't
> 3rd party developers here, we are the desktop's core developers.
> 
> that's what KDE is all about: creating the desktop that didn't exist
>  previously. if the KDE1 developers had thought "we can't change the
> boundary conditions" there would be no UNIX desktop as we know it
> today.
> 
Sorry, I shouldn't have used an engineering (DE) term which you don't 
understand.  You can't change boundary conditions -- by definition they 
are the conditions at the boundary of the problem (the conditions which 
define the problem).

We get nowhere by saying that we wish that other developers would change
the way their apps do things with files in the HOME directory.

	"If wishes were horses, then even beggars could ride" :-D

NOTE: We can't change the boundary conditions means exactly that.  We 
can ask that others do so and IIUC with X11 we have asked and they have 
been changed.  This is all to the good, but if they hadn't changed them, 
we would have had to live with them.

>> Also you are ignoring the other "boundary condition".  Some common
>> apps do NOT hide the hidden files and folders when displaying the
>> contents of the directory.  Example: Firefox, & CrossOver Office.
> 
> we're talking about settings and data, not binary installations.

You may choose to ignore binary installations, but they still exist.

> We've already covered cross over elsewhere in this thread and firefox
> keeps it's data and settings hidden away like a good UNIX program.

When you view a a directory in CrossOver Office or Firefox, the so
called 'hidden' files are not hidden and AFAIK there is no way to hide
them.  Yes, we can suggest that these two apps change this behavior (I 
would certainly appreciate it if they were able to hide 'hidden' files), 
but it is a boundary condition (we do not have the power to change it) 
and there are probably other instances of the problem.

Maxim: We should not design our software based on the assumption that 
others will always do things the way we want.

Actually, engineers learn the opposite: "Murphy was an optimist". :-)

-- 
JRT