[Bug 204909] Re: .desktop filename total confusion

[André Pirard]

** Description changed:

- Tested in 8.04 alphas ...
- When a Firefox URL is dragged to a folder in a File Browser window, an object with an Earth icon is built that behaves totally erraticaly in countless situations.
- First and mostly, the real filename is not the filename that the File Browser displays which is a Windoism, let's call the latter the garnment : the user is shown messages about for example invalid filenames he's unaware of whereas the garnment he sees is a perfectly valid one.
- And when he clicks to rename the file, what he renames is not the filename but the garnment. From clueless, he gets mad.
- But what's more, the system itself is totally confused.
- For example, dragging such a file to move, copy or execute it may result in a message stating that the garnment could not have been processed, that the filename is duplicate (imagine there was no duplicate warning!!!), that the filename is invalid [for the destination filesystem], etc... etc...
+ This was experienced in Ubuntu 8.04.
  
- Definitely, the idea to have a fake filename usurp the real one should be quit.
- The said object should have a single filename created to be valid on all supported filesystems (for example FAT32 onto which dragging an URL may silently do nothing) so that it can be later moved from one to the other.
- The caption is well enough to adorn an icon with a garnment.
+ Launcher icons display a smart name different from the filename.
+ This is great to allow names in different languages.
+ But the particular implementation of this causes many problems.
+ 
+ 1) The user has no way to know the filename.
+ He even believes that, like for other files, the filename is the name he sees.
+ 
+ 2) Even when knowing a difference may exist, there is now way to
+ - tell that the name displayed is potentially different
+ - determine the filename if it's different
+ Not even a dir will tell whose filename is which name.
+ Nor even requesting the properties of the launcher.
+ One has to resort to editing a launcher to be sure of its filename !!!
+ Or do a grep <smart-name> * !!!
+ 
+ 3) Because of that, the error messages are confusing.
+ Copy -> "duplicate filename" will indicate the smart-name.
+ And the user may see no duplicate name condition.
+ Or if he sees one, he renames the smart name and the message remains.
+ 
+ 4) The user can't (easily) rename his files to remove the error condition.
+ What Rename does rename is the smart-name, not the cause of the error.
+ 
+ 5) The error situations are numerous.
+ "duplicate filename" is one
+ "invalid filename" is frequent (esp. when copying files to FAT32).
+ I've seen the system itself mixing up the two names.
+ I've seen messages saying that it couldn't stat some smart name.
+ 
+ 6) Firefox abuses this inconvenience.
+ It creates launchers with very pretty display names but horrible filenames.
+ One typical experience is trying to drag URLs onto a FAT directory.
+ Nothing may happen (no message), because the filename is invalid for FAT.
+ Head scratching, trying to drag onto Linux patition. This works. Oh.
+ Trying to move to FAT -> "invalid filename". Oh.
+ Rename, no way, oh, ... and fiddling with 1-5 above.
+ 
+ In conclusion.
+ 
+ It should be obvious when the name displayed is not the filename.
+ There should be some mark on the icon when that happens.
+ BTW, this is much like the arrow to an icon of an à la MS-Windows symbolic link.
+ 
+ If not displayed right away, the filename should be easily found.
+ At least the properties should mention it.
+ Balloon text (tip) is nice too.
+ 
+ It should be easy to rename the filename.
+ Probably, Desktop's Rename should offer to choose which name to rename.
+ 
+ Hoping this will help making Linux usable by really anybody.
+ 
+ André.

-- 
.desktop filename total confusion
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/204909
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