Path: nntp.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Nuno Silva Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: XDG and Freedesktop (was: Re: Program to dole out jpg's to subdirctories, card-dealing style.) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2025 10:35:05 +0100 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 78 Message-ID: <103r1c9$1ellf$1@dont-email.me> References: <103a6c8$qvlb$1@dont-email.me> <103psi2$142ke$10@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2025 11:35:06 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="84fbf177afd5041385ef0eaee7be3515"; logging-data="1529519"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1//EIljqARiIWskkweW0E9R" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:L2uqAGlRf7UUvGH1DeNvp34ywOs= On 2025-06-29, Eli the Bearded wrote: > In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro 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 > > 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