🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr13.015822.528@asw.com> jayson@asw.com (Jayson Adams) writes:
>	[From the user interface guidelines]

>  >  	If the user never needs to get at the files or folders
>  > independently of using the application that creates them, they should be
>  > placed in the user's home folder but preceded by a dot prefix so they
>  > stay hidden from view.
>  
>  Sounds great in theory, some users will be forced to see these damn files  
>  and folders (does preferring UNIX Expert mode suddenly not make me a  
>  user?).  This guideline should be reexamined and changed.

After giving this a lot of thought and vascillating my opinion back
and forth several times, I'm tempted to agree with Andrew Loewenstern
(not quoted here) who says that UNIX Export mode is all about seeing
or not seeing hidden files, and that is enough of a mechanism.

Given that there are literally dozens of products that store dot files
in your home directory, and given that it actually is sanctioned as
the correct thing to do by the User Interface Guidelines, I believe
that we ought to keep the paradigm as it is, but be careful not to
proliferate unnecessary files that could be stored as simple Preferences.
High scores from games, for example, are usually just integers, and could
easily be stored in the Preferences database.

I think it makes no sense to "reexamine and change" the interface guideline
based on the fact that Experts don't like to see lots of dot files.  For
one thing, we would never entirely erradicate all of the dot files or fix
all of the software, and for another thing, there are better things for
us all to do :-)

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