[kde-linux] KGet: "My Documents"

[James Tyrer]

On 04/10/2012 11:30 PM, Duncan wrote:
> James Tyrer posted on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:02:39 -0700 as excerpted:
>
>> I find that, by itself, KGet has added the group: "My Documents".  What
>> is this, KDE-Vista?
>>
>> I also find that I can not rename or delete this group.
>>
>> I have to say that I do not find this to be a useful feature.  I do not
>> see how hard coding MS-Windows like junk is a good idea rather than
>> following the XDG and FreeDesktop.org standards.
>>
>> My: "$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs" file contains:
>>
>> 	XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Files/DownLoad"
>>
>> and my: "$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs" file contains:
>>
>> 	[Desktop Entry]
>> 	Icon=folder-downloads
>>
>> Would it really be that hard for this to work correctly.
>>
>> I do not understand why the group can not be renamed or removed.  I can
>> see that there might be a reason why if there were only one group in the
>> list that it could not be removed, but that is not what we have.
>
> First of all, can user or group names have spaces in them?  And if it's a
> group, what's the GID?  Are you sure it's KGet that's setting up another
> group?  Does your user get added to that group or what?
>
No, it is just a Group in KGet.  Poor choice of words but it is the 
developer, not me, that chose it.

> Or are you talking about a directory, not a group?  That would seem to
> make more sense in context so I'll proceed under that assumption.
>
No, it is a virtual entity.  Open the: "Configure - KGet" dialog, go to 
the "Groups" section to see what I am talking about.
>
> A bit of googling gave me this:
>
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs
>
> I don't happen to have either that software or kget installed,

You probably aren't going to get much out of this unless you have the 
current KGet installed.

> but I do
> have the ~/config/usr-dirs.dirs file. (XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set to ~/config
> here, no leading dot, as I prefer to see such directories, not have them
> hidden, so the file would be and is in the no-dot-dir accordingly,
> honoring the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable setting, tho just to be
> safe I have ~/.config as a symlink to ~/config , so I guess I don't know
> for sure that it's honored, or whether it's simply following the symlink.)
>
> Perhaps you're looking for kde settings, common appearance and behavior,
> account details, paths.  The entries in that kcontrol module seem to
> correspond to the entries in my user-dirs.dirs file, but for the
> autostart path.  FWIW, few if any of them are set to the defaults, here.
>
> The settings in that file (corresponding to the ones in the kcontrol
> module) are of the form XDG_*_DIR, where the * is one of DESKTOP
> DOCUMENTS MUSIC PICTURES VIDEOS .
>
> Meanwhile, downloading the latest tarball for the xdg-user-dirs software
> package noted above, I see a user-dirs.defaults file therein.  It
> contains three additional entries, DOWNLOAD TEMPLATES and PUBLICSHARE .
>
>
> You mention the DOWNLOAD setting, but don't mention whether the DOCUMENTS
> path is set, or the others.  I'd guess that it's using the DOCUMENTS
> path, which you hadn't set, so it's using a default.  Now the software
> mentioned above sets a default of XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR=Documents, but
> presumably, being previously unset, either kde (FWIW, kcm_desktoppaths.so
> is the kcontrol module, belonging to kde's systemsettings package here on
> gentoo, which is apparently part of the kde-workspace kde sources tarball)
> or something else decided My Documents was appropriate, so set that
> instead.
>
There is only partial integration with this and KDE for the "Desktop" 
and "Documents" directories in the KCM.  However, if the code knows how 
to work with these XDG directories, it should work with the others as 
well.  And, as you said, there is: 
"XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR=<download_directory>" in: "user-dirs.dirs".
>
> Presumably, kget is using the documents xdg var instead of downloads, I'd
> guess because the downloads var was introduced after kget was already
> using the documents setting, the one that would have made the most sense
> if there wasn't yet a specific downloads setting.
>
What is "downloads var"?

KGet has had this new feature added since XDG-User-Dirs had a Download 
directory.  The XDG Download directory is the logical default for all 
files till the user adds other directories.  It appears that it is 
supposed to work with the XDG-User-Dirs, but it doesn't work.

This appears to be my usual complaint about the lack of design work.  I 
think that I am good at this part of engineering.  This could be good, 
but it needs a lot of work by a designer, not just a coder.
-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch