[Thunar-dev] Desktop

[Benedikt Meurer]

Francois and I just shared a few thoughts about how to handle the 
desktop in #thunar. Here's the important part, so others can join the 
discussion:

<benny> IMHO, the real problem with Unix file managers is always the 
desktop... microsoft did a good job making the desktop the toplevel 
element, and not something below `My files'... but that doesn't work 
that way in the Unix world, since for a user, everything is below $HOME 
(except for some temp files and maybe stuff like mails)
<benny> and if we don't want to confuse many users, we'll need to use 
~/Desktop/ as thats what Gnome/KDE uses and thats what nearly all other 
apps (like Thunderbird, Firefox, all GtkFileChooser-based apps, ...) use
<Fuzzbox> Too bad. Desktop and HOME are so redundant. I don't understand 
why they choose to do it this way. It's copied on Windows desktop.
<Fuzzbox> And I don't think they made a good job.
<Fuzzbox> s/they/M$
...
<Fuzzbox> It works indeed in the Windows world but it's confusing on a 
unix system.
...
<benny> but whatever the solution may be, it should maintain a minimum 
degree of compatibility... that is, if I choose to save a file on the 
Desktop in Firefox, that file should end up being shown on my Xfce desktop

greets,
Benedikt

-- 
Xfce  --  small, stable, fast  --  http://www.xfce.org/

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