On 2025-06-29, Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 28 Jun 2025 14:07:22 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

I refuse to use drag-and-drop. It's too dangerous, even for experienced >>> users. One slip of the finger on the mouse button you're dragging, and
it's time for
$ find ~ -print | grep <myfilename>

Valid, but I'd probably go with:

find ~ -name \*myfilename\*

I don't use drag-n-drop because I don't use any file manager I can drag
from.

In my case, it would just end up on the desktop. (What? You don't have an
entire virtual desktop dedicated to things like your email client?)

Nope. Why would I need a virtual desktop for mailx? I don't have a
"desktop" I have a root window blissfully free of icons. If only I could convince XDG aware programs that "Desktop" is not a place.

$ grep -i desktop ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/.empty"
$ (cd ; du .empty)
4 .empty
$

Elijah
------
does a lot of command line file management on his phone, too

Such XDG "compliance" does tend to introduce some annoying things that
in no way appear to be designed to cater to users who don't want the MS
Windows experience, or the freedesktop idea of what Linux-based systems
should be like.

* This idea of "Documents" and "Desktop" being folders that exist.

* The whole XDG_CONFIG_HOME approach is needlessly incompatible with the
standard (even if just de facto) configuration directory approach. All
it'd take to avoid the breakage would be requiring subdirectories of
it to begin with a "." - then backwards compatibility could perhaps be
a matter of setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME to $HOME?

* There have been changes breaking expectations and standards in how
copy-paste is handled in applications and toolkits because at some
point it was seen fitting to follow some other specification for how
copy and paste is handled, and places where Shift-Insert used to paste
from PRIMARY now paste content from CLIPBOARD.

Even in the event this was all in good faith, there's definitely more
than just one occurrence of it breaking compatibility bad enough that it amounts to pushing the freedesktop view of what the system should be.

Not to mention now there have been utilities adopting the
XDG_CONFIG_HOME approach... but what does that mean for other UNIX and UNIX-like systems? Users on other systems have to do it the freedesktop
way now?


There was also the introduction (or more widespread adoption?) of yet
another separate mechanism to handle file types and protocols, this one apparently focused on "the desktop environment will provide a way to
handle it" - at least there are command line utilities that can
manipulate the settings, and IIRC these also work without a desktop environment, despite the wording of at least the xdg-settings online
manual page suggesting it requires one. I think the only challenge of
this one, once one knows the tools, might be that it requires "desktop
entry" files (".desktop").

(Cf. my (non-)answer at https://askubuntu.com/a/141178, but do note that
the accepted answer, not mine, is the one which addresses the actual
issue in the question.)

--
Nuno Silva

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On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:35:05 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

* The whole XDG_CONFIG_HOME approach is needlessly incompatible with the
standard (even if just de facto) configuration directory approach.

ldo@theon:~> ls -d ~/.[!.]* | wc -l
270

Death to dotfile clutter!

Not to mention now there have been utilities adopting the
XDG_CONFIG_HOME approach... but what does that mean for other UNIX and UNIX-like systems? Users on other systems have to do it the freedesktop
way now?

This is all implemented in common library code. If the same code runs on a different *nix system, built against the same libraries, then it will
implement the same conventions for its dotfiles.

I think the only challenge of this one, once one knows the tools,
might be that it requires "desktop entry" files (".desktop").

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons on
the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in file managers.

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In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

ldo@theon:~> ls -d ~/.[!.]* | wc -l
270
Death to dotfile clutter!

Unix doesn't have Windows Registry, it has dot files.

This is all implemented in common library code. If the same code runs on a different *nix system, built against the same libraries, then it will implement the same conventions for its dotfiles.

Bunch of big "if"s there.

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons on
the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in file
managers.

Somehow I find myself not needing any of those things.

Elijah
------
is admittedly different in UI taste

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On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

ldo@theon:~> ls -d ~/.[!.]* | wc -l 270

Death to dotfile clutter!

Unix ... has dot files.

Way too many of them. How many are there in your $HOME?

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

This is all implemented in common library code. If the same code runs
on a different *nix system, built against the same libraries, then it
will implement the same conventions for its dotfiles.

Bunch of big "if"s there.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes. They’re
not some “fringe” group as you might think.

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons
on the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in
file managers.

Somehow I find myself not needing any of those things.

If you run a Linux GUI, then you already have them.

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In Message-ID: <eli$2506300118@qaz.wtf> Eli the Bearded:

[Snip...]

Somehow I find myself not needing any of those things.

+1

Elijah
------
is admittedly different in UI taste

++1

Running barebones openbox DIY pointy-clicky hoopla.

Yeah, I'm a greybeard luddite. So sue me.

--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at att, dotted with net. * DO NOT SPAM IT. *
I toss GoogleGroup (http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/).

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In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

Unix ... has dot files.

Way too many of them. How many are there in your $HOME?

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

Does it? Or does it just create a new closet to sweep them into?

$ ls -a $HOME |grep -c '^[.]'
72
$ find ~/.config -type f |wc
305 327 21490
$

Bunch of big "if"s there.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes. They're
not some "fringe" group as you might think.

Yeah, but I run plenty of programs that don't use those libraries and
are unlikely to do so. Is ksh ever going to use ~/.config/profile ? (Is
bash?) xfig is a tool I still use and like, but it most certainly is not
using a file dialog from this century.

Not all the world is Linux, and tools like xfig predate Linux.

Also XDG has a very limited understanding of how people may organize
files. I don't have a "templates" directory, I'm not even sure what I'd
put in one. I don't have a "music" directory, and I don't need one.

Here are the directories I want to use to organize things:

$HOME/src # my own programs
$HOME/packages # tar balls and the like
$HOME/builds # build root for packages
$HOME/notes # personal text files, including email
$HOME/bin # where my programs live
$HOME/lib # where my libraries live
$HOME/man # where my man pages live
$HOME/images # photos and no-photos
$HOME/tmp # temporary storage, eg downloads
$HOME/video # video files

No capital letters in names. I co-opt some of the XDG settings to use
these, but that's working around the library instead of with it. (Eg. I
use $HOME/tmp for "templates" simply because of similar letters.)

If you run a Linux GUI, then you already have them.

I know that the files on on the disk, I dispute that I use them. At
any one time I'm usually running just the following windowed programs:

xterm (x many times)
Firefox
Deluge
icewm components

On a temporary basis, I start, run, and quit programs like feh, xpdf,
mplayer, gimp, xfig, vuescan. I don't think I have used any others on
Linux in the last two months. Icons and menus are not a significant part
of how I use icewm. Even the firefox process I've been using for the
last week or two right now was started from a command line in an xterm.

Elijah
------
prefers the login on console and start X manually model of Unix

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On 2025-06-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:35:05 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

[...]

I think the only challenge of this one, once one knows the tools,
might be that it requires "desktop entry" files (".desktop").

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons on
the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in file
managers.

Yes, but they're additional things, which was what I was aiming at with
the «it requires "desktop entry" files» part, as opposed to just
providing a binary name or a command to execute.

If the tool you want to use does not have a desktop entry file, can you
use it for file/protocol associations without creating such a file
first?

--
Nuno Silva

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On 2025-06-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

ldo@theon:~> ls -d ~/.[!.]* | wc -l 270

Death to dotfile clutter!

Unix ... has dot files.

Way too many of them. How many are there in your $HOME?

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

You did miss the point that the spec does this in a way that
specifically does not allow to retain the previous behaviour. Why?

This, intentionally or not, deals a blow to choice.

It would literally take just a dot per file to retain that
compatibility. You call them "dot files", but that's precisely the
problem, they *aren't* "dot files" anymore.

This is all implemented in common library code. If the same code runs
on a different *nix system, built against the same libraries, then it
will implement the same conventions for its dotfiles.

Bunch of big "if"s there.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes. They’re not some “fringe” group as you might think.

Oh, how common is freedesktop adoption in non-Linux-based UNIX-like
systems?

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons
on the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in >>> file managers.

Somehow I find myself not needing any of those things.

If you run a Linux GUI, then you already have them.

No. See, you're doing what freedesktop appears to sometimes do, conflate
GUI with "full-featured Desktop Environment". It's possible to use a GUI
in a Linux-based system without most or all of that.

--
Nuno Silva

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On 6/30/25 11:50, Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

Unix ... has dot files.

Way too many of them. How many are there in your $HOME?

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

Does it? Or does it just create a new closet to sweep them into?

$ ls -a $HOME |grep -c '^[.]'
72
$ find ~/.config -type f |wc
305 327 21490
$

Bunch of big "if"s there.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes. They're
not some "fringe" group as you might think.

Yeah, but I run plenty of programs that don't use those libraries and
are unlikely to do so. Is ksh ever going to use ~/.config/profile ? (Is bash?) xfig is a tool I still use and like, but it most certainly is not using a file dialog from this century.

Not all the world is Linux, and tools like xfig predate Linux.

Also XDG has a very limited understanding of how people may organize
files. I don't have a "templates" directory, I'm not even sure what I'd
put in one. I don't have a "music" directory, and I don't need one.

Here are the directories I want to use to organize things:

$HOME/src # my own programs
$HOME/packages # tar balls and the like
$HOME/builds # build root for packages
$HOME/notes # personal text files, including email
$HOME/bin # where my programs live
$HOME/lib # where my libraries live
$HOME/man # where my man pages live
$HOME/images # photos and no-photos
$HOME/tmp # temporary storage, eg downloads
$HOME/video # video files

No capital letters in names. I co-opt some of the XDG settings to use
these, but that's working around the library instead of with it. (Eg. I
use $HOME/tmp for "templates" simply because of similar letters.)

If you run a Linux GUI, then you already have them.

I know that the files on on the disk, I dispute that I use them. At
any one time I'm usually running just the following windowed programs:

xterm (x many times)
Firefox
Deluge
icewm components

On a temporary basis, I start, run, and quit programs like feh, xpdf, mplayer, gimp, xfig, vuescan. I don't think I have used any others on
Linux in the last two months. Icons and menus are not a significant part
of how I use icewm. Even the firefox process I've been using for the
last week or two right now was started from a command line in an xterm.

Elijah
------
prefers the login on console and start X manually model of Unix

Well that is your preference but maybe you had better write your own
Operating System using the ideas you have.. Speaking of such things
on the AmigaOS up to 3.9 we used clearly labeled directories into which
we were responsible for installing various components manually and
adding stuff to the Startup-Script and the User Startup. We had no
protection but if we wanted to use stuff from the Aminet which is
still extant we had to learn how to do things.

With GNU/Linux I had to learn new stuff but it is far less
labor intensive on my distribution, PCLinuxOS. We have a more
easily used tool to do updates which are coming at a good rate
considering all that we habe so many libraries and commands
to keep updated for security and for functionality.

So write your own system but you might take a look at
all the other systems which have been used. AmigaOS was
evolved from TRIOS. AmigaOS had lots of problems but it
was a true Personal Computer OS. So is PCLinuxOS.

bliss-Dell Precision 7730-PCLOS 2025.06- Linux 6.12.35 pclos1-KDE Plasma 5.27.11

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On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:12:14 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2025-06-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:35:05 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

I think the only challenge of this one, once one knows the tools,
might be that it requires "desktop entry" files (".desktop").

These are very versatile things. They not only define clickable icons
on the desktop, but also menu entries. And also icons in the favourites
toolbar. And also custom entries in the “create new document” menu in
file managers.

Yes, but they're additional things, which was what I was aiming at with
the «it requires "desktop entry" files» part, as opposed to just
providing a binary name or a command to execute.

They are wrappers, which allow you to hook your custom functions into the
GUI in all the places where you might want to.

If the tool you want to use does not have a desktop entry file, can you
use it for file/protocol associations without creating such a file
first?

Doesn’t seem like it <https://manpages.debian.org/xdg-mime(1)>. Document- application associations are an inseparable part of the whole concept of a
GUI.

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On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 13:15:49 -0700, John Ames wrote:

Or is there some breed of weirdo out there that does all their letter- writing/Paint doodling/whatever by opening up an existing document,
making changes, and saving it as a new file?

Some apps can have quite complex document setups. Even something as basic
as a word processor can be customized with different sets of stylesheets
for different types of documents -- all specific to this particular user,
and nobody else.

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On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:07:03 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

You did miss the point that the spec does this in a way that
specifically does not allow to retain the previous behaviour. Why?

To get rid of the clutter.

This, intentionally or not, deals a blow to choice.

Think of it this way: keeping all those dotfiles in the root of $HOME is
not just clutter, it’s also a potential privacy risk. It lets other users
on the system see the kinds of apps you run, and perhaps even when you
last ran them.

It would literally take just a dot per file to retain that
compatibility.

Putting files beginning with “.” inside directories beginning with “.” is
kind of ... stupid, don’t you think? The initial “.” is supposed to denote
“don’t normally show this file/dir”. It was a hack to reduce clutter.

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On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:50:40 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

Does it? Or does it just create a new closet to sweep them into?

It actually creates a closet to pack things into, whereas before all those files were lying loose around the floor of your bedroom (aka $HOME). It actually helps to clean up your room.

Most of the Linux distros around already contain those libraries. The
whole freedesktop.org group has widespread support among *nixes.
They're not some "fringe" group as you might think.

Yeah, but I run plenty of programs that don't use those libraries and
are unlikely to do so.

Many projects have converted. E.g Blender did this some years ago.
Inkscape and GIMP do too. I think newer ones just do it as a matter of
course.

Not all the world is Linux, and tools like xfig predate Linux.

Freedesktop specs aren’t supposed to be Linux-specific.

Also XDG has a very limited understanding of how people may organize
files. I don't have a "templates" directory, I'm not even sure what I'd
put in one.

There are people accustomed to, shall we say, more “object-oriented” ways of doing things. Instead of opening an “Untitled” document in the app, and then having to select the name and place to save it with/in for the first
time, using a template lets you start with a document already named and
placed correctly (and with some suitable initial settings), which you then
open in the app to insert the actual content.

I don't have a "music" directory, and I don't need one.

Neither do I, technically. The stuff I download is kept separate from the
stuff I create myself.

Here are the directories I want to use to organize things:

Suit yourself. Free Software is all about choice.

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In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:50:40 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

The XDG spec aims to keep this clutter under control.

Does it? Or does it just create a new closet to sweep them into?

It actually creates a closet to pack things into, whereas before all those files were lying loose around the floor of your bedroom (aka $HOME). It actually helps to clean up your room.

How is a "closet to pack things into" different from a "closet to sweep
them into"? I think you have agreed with my statement to 99.9%.

Yeah, but I run plenty of programs that don't use those libraries and
are unlikely to do so.

Many projects have converted. E.g Blender did this some years ago.
Inkscape and GIMP do too. I think newer ones just do it as a matter of course.

There's an inverse correlation between "difficulty to compile for
oneself" and "likelihood to use XDG conventions".

Not all the world is Linux, and tools like xfig predate Linux.

Freedesktop specs aren't supposed to be Linux-specific.

They sure as fuck are not on the other Unix I use these days, my $WORK Macintosh. Maybe the other BSDs have picked it up, I have never used
a GUI on modern Netbsd/Freebsd/Openbsd, only shell tools.

Also XDG has a very limited understanding of how people may organize
files. I don't have a "templates" directory, I'm not even sure what I'd
put in one.

There are people accustomed to, shall we say, more "object-oriented" ways
of doing things. Instead of opening an "Untitled" document in the app, and then having to select the name and place to save it with/in for the first time, using a template lets you start with a document already named and placed correctly (and with some suitable initial settings), which you then open in the app to insert the actual content.

I'm aware such "workflows" exist. I fully acknowledge that my way to do
things is atypical. I also am not sure how many people actually use the "template" way to work.

Here are the directories I want to use to organize things:

Suit yourself. Free Software is all about choice.

Free Software's choice is Hobson's Choice. Just unlike the old model,
you don't pay through the teeth for it. I can use what is available or
spend all my free time making something else. The same thing was true
when the C compiler cost $295, as here, which was not atypical:

Computer:
https://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=122

Prices:
http://www.coho.org/~pete/IPC/ordering.html

I used to run locally tweaked sources and compiled versions of things,
but as the library dependencies grew, so too the pain of doing that.
Even different build options are tricky with some modern software. It's
not like Perl: mostly self-contained with just a few very basic
pre-requisites.

Elijah
------
cellphones are even worse; an Android build needs a ton of resources

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On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 04:20:16 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Document-application associations are an inseparable part of the whole
concept of a GUI.

Uh-huh. I think you fail to convey anything significant there.

You were asking whether it was possible to set up such associations in an XDG-style system without the help of .desktop files. The answer is no.

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In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Document-application associations are an inseparable part of the whole concept of a GUI.

Uh-huh. I think you fail to convey anything significant there.

Document-*TYPE* application associations (in the "preferences" not "requirements" meaning of "association") existed before GUIs are are
baked into TUI and CLIs in various ways, consider $EDITOR and
mailcap configuration, which gets used by Pine and Elm.

Macintosh in the pre-"Unix inside" age (maybe still but I'm not looking
under the covers these days) associated an owner and type to a file --
an individual file -- both as four letter codes. Any program that could
open TEXT files could edit a TEXT file with say "File->Open". But if you double-clicked an icon, it would try to use the program that owned the
file. That was a "document-application association" in the true sense.
You needed to edit the file itself to change what program would be the
default to open it, and there were power user tools to do just that.

Windows does it's own thing, the details of which I am blissfully
unaware of.

There's nothing stopping you or I from building some new system of associations. Maybe file(1) could be modified to be a launcher. Or
a GUI could use directories as keys for the program to launch. There's
the Android model with common types managed by the OS and private
ones quite literally owned by the app (dedicated user per app along
the lines of daemons).

A Plan 9 system might create a union mount between a program and
the files for it, and under Plan 9 such mounts could be created
per process if needed.

Elijah
------
used mgr ( hack.org/~mc/mgr/ ) briefly but does not recall how it worked there

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On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 03:40:50 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

How is a "closet to pack things into" different from a "closet to sweep
them into"?

Shelves.

Freedesktop specs aren't supposed to be Linux-specific.

They sure as fuck are not on the other Unix I use these days, my $WORK Macintosh.

But that’s not really a *nix system, is it? It is “Unix®”, but “Unix®” is
just a trademark that Apple has licensed, it doesn’t make it work like
people expect a *nix system to work.

Free Software's choice is Hobson's Choice.

I think people who are too accustomed to thinking like users of
proprietary software cannot escape that mentality.

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On 2025-07-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:07:03 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

You did miss the point that the spec does this in a way that
specifically does not allow to retain the previous behaviour. Why?

To get rid of the clutter.

This, intentionally or not, deals a blow to choice.

Think of it this way: keeping all those dotfiles in the root of $HOME is
not just clutter, it’s also a potential privacy risk. It lets other users on the system see the kinds of apps you run, and perhaps even when you
last ran them.

That's not really a valid argument, is it?

Sounds to me that you need to check the permissions and umask in use in
your system?

It would literally take just a dot per file to retain that
compatibility.

Putting files beginning with “.” inside directories beginning with “.” is
kind of ... stupid, don’t you think? The initial “.” is supposed to denote
“don’t normally show this file/dir”. It was a hack to reduce clutter.

At this point, I'm starting to suspect you're trying to justify a bad
and non-inclusive design decision as you go.

It's all fun to argue about "." in front of names being a hack, but
that's a very tiny cost that'd have given you the ability to coexist
with the existing approach.

--
Nuno Silva

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John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> writes:

Like, okay, music/pictures/etc. I get, but "templates" has always
baffled me; do they think everyone does mass mail-merge on the regular?
Or is there some breed of weirdo out there that does all their letter- writing/Paint doodling/whatever by opening up an existing document,
making changes, and saving it as a new file?

A lot of organizational process involves standardized document
templates, either to make sure that people document or think about the
right things, or (depending on the intended audience) to ensure a
corporate style is followed.

Anyway, if these directories don’t fit your needs then nothing is
forcing you to use them and nothing is preventing your from creating
your own.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 07:02:45 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2025-07-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Think of it this way: keeping all those dotfiles in the root of $HOME
is not just clutter, it’s also a potential privacy risk. It lets other
users on the system see the kinds of apps you run, and perhaps even
when you last ran them.

That's not really a valid argument, is it?

Sounds to me that you need to check the permissions and umask in use in
your system?

Suppose you wanted to share some files with other users, but not other
files. Tell me how you would group things and set permissions on your directories to achieve that, starting from $HOME.

It's all fun to argue about "." in front of names being a hack, but
that's a very tiny cost that'd have given you the ability to coexist
with the existing approach.

One or two files, no big deal. Once we get up to a few hundred, then
that’s clutter.

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Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2025-07-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:07:03 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

It would literally take just a dot per file to retain that
compatibility.

Putting files beginning with “.” inside directories beginning with “.” is
kind of ... stupid, don’t you think? The initial “.” is supposed to denote
“don’t normally show this file/dir”. It was a hack to reduce clutter.

At this point, I'm starting to suspect you're trying to justify a bad
and non-inclusive design decision as you go.

Lawrence is more often trolling than contributing. You are starting to
sense the Dr. Jeckil trolling side here. A killfile entry helps to
reduce one's exposure to the trolling.

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On 7/1/25 09:01, John Ames wrote:

On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 04:28:23 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

They sure as fuck are not on the other Unix I use these days, my
$WORK Macintosh.

But that’s not really a *nix system, is it? It is “Unix®”, but
“Unix®” is just a trademark that Apple has licensed, it doesn’t make >> it work like people expect a *nix system to work.

OSX is marvelous - it's Unix when freenix zealots want to count it for representation in popularity contests vs. The Great Satan of Redmond,
but *not* Unix when they need to justify some arbitrary decision of a
freenix "standards" group as The Only Way. A true chameleon!

The moderately large Satan of Redmond gets us lots of refurbished machines
on which to run some other systems most notably GNU/Linux and several
versions
of Unix. So don't curse the Satan for whatever other sins of bad
programming and
insecurity they have perpetuated but rather for the good ideas they have
bought
and supressed.

bliss-Dell Precision 7730-PCLOS 2025.06- Linux 6.12.35 pclos1-KDE Plasma 5.27.11

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On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 09:01:50 -0700, John Ames wrote:

OSX is marvelous - it's Unix when freenix zealots want to count it for representation in popularity contests vs. The Great Satan of Redmond,
but *not* Unix when they need to justify some arbitrary decision of a
freenix "standards" group as The Only Way. A true chameleon!

There is this thing called “the Unix philosophy”. Or perhaps we should start calling it “the *nix philosophy”, to get away from any trademark confusion.

One of its principles is “mechanism, not policy”. The OS kernel and core userland should be a versatile toolkit on top of which the user/developer/ admin can build more specialized applications; that core should not
enforce any particular policies about how such apps should work, instead
just providing a suitably-general mechanism on which the user/developer/
admin can implement just about any policy they desire.

Consider how the X11 display server, and its Wayland successor, conform to
this philosophy, being basically toolkits on top of which you can build countless different styles of GUIs. Or even none at all, if that’s your desire. And consider how MacOS violates that philosophy, by inextricably binding its “One True” GUI, right up to a very high level, directly into the OS kernel.

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On 01/07/2025 20:49, John Ames wrote:

On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 08:38:23 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Anyway, if these directories don’t fit your needs then nothing is
forcing you to use them and nothing is preventing your from creating
your own.

Nothing's forcing me to *use* them, but certain software insists on re- creating them when I delete them, which is obnoxious.

I missed the upstream on this but if it is that certain desktops insist
on creating folders this is configurable.

--
“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

- Bertrand Russell

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On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 12:49:36 -0700, John Ames wrote:

On Tue, 01 Jul 2025 08:38:23 +0100 Richard Kettlewell
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Anyway, if these directories don’t fit your needs then nothing is
forcing you to use them and nothing is preventing your from creating
your own.

Nothing's forcing me to *use* them, but certain software insists on re-
creating them when I delete them, which is obnoxious.

Stop using that software, then.

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this!”
“Don’t do that, then!”

What if the problem is toolkits or other libraries creating these just
because of the freedesktop specs? And made worse by more libraries
adopting such behaviours because "it doesn't hurt"?

(Certainly such directories *are* clutter to a subset of users... but freedesktop isn't fighting this, so are you sure their goal with
dotfiles really was getting rid of clutter?)

I don't know how pervasive this currently is, it might be something like
dbus, which in theory is optional in a lot of tools, but once installed
on a system might end up getting a bus started often merely because it's present.

--
Nuno Silva

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On Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:33:08 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

What if the problem is toolkits or other libraries creating these just because of the freedesktop specs? And made worse by more libraries
adopting such behaviours because "it doesn't hurt"?

I’m not aware of any such.

I can remember, I deleted the “Downloads” folder on my laptop, and every now and then something would complain about that. But nothing actually recreated it. And after a while the complaints went away.

So let us know, what exactly is/are the piece(s) of software that are recreating these folders when you try to delete them?

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On 03/07/2025 15:55, John Ames wrote:

On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 23:41:50 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

So let us know, what exactly is/are the piece(s) of software that are
recreating these folders when you try to delete them?

No idea - they just keep mysteriously re-appearing.

IIRC when I had a rash of these, it turned out that there was a file in
.config that listed folders that had to be created on desktop startup.
If they werent present...

~/.config$ more user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"


I see that has been edited to remove most of the more offensive ones
--
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.”

Thomas Sowell

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