GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 558435
Templates directory is not easily discoverable
Last modified: 2012-08-20 22:55:06 UTC
The templates directory in many user's directories remains empty due to not knowing how to install templates. When you have no templates in your templates folder, Nautilus says "No Templates Installed", where it should more suggestively say "No Templates Available", as we do not install templates globally. This may lead the user in the wrong direction when looking to add new templates. It might be helpful to add an entry e.g. "Open Templates Directory" as well. Furthermore, the user documentation contains nothing about the Templates subdirectory and how to use it to create new documents.
Proposed fix A: In menu "Create Document" add menu item "Open Templates Directory" as a last item, probably separated from others using menu delimiter (to signify the item is different from the rest of pack). Clicking this item would open Nautilus displaying the ~/Templates folder (or however it is localized). Proposed fix B: In menu "Create Document" add menu item "Add or Remove Templates..." (note ellipsis), bottom, with menu separator. Clicking this item would open dialog with all all items - from ~/Templates, /etc/skel/Templates and system. Each item would have checkbox to enable/disable displaying in "Create Document" (in case the menu goes overpopulated and the user lacks super-user capabilities) and button "Add..." for adding new item.
Another problem is that users often do not have templates. Sure, they could create empty files, but that takes time and is not immediately obvious. This makes using the feature hard in two ways: First the users don't know about the feature, and then they have to invest time up front without knowing how much they'll actually use the feature. My suggestion: 1) Add an "Add or remove templates" entry to the Create Document submenu. Clicking this opens the folder specified in user-dirs.dirs 2) Add a top bar to the templates folder, similar to the ones in CD/DVD Creator and in removable devices that are detected as music players or digital cameras. It should have a text like "Place your templates here to make them available in the 'Create Document' menu" and a button like "Open Template Library". 3) Clicking that button will open a nautilus window showing /usr/share/templates. Users can now copy the templates they want and paste them into the templates window. 4) Distributions and applications place the templates they want to make available to the user in there. Of course, the strings should probably be sent to the usability team. Advantages of this method: 1) No complex template management - as before, it's just managing files. It is more discoverable though. 2) Applications, distributions, or administrators can provide ready-made templates to the user, reducing the amount of work needed to make use of the feature. 3) No clutter by default - users select which templates they want to have available. Even if applications were to clutter the Templates library as feared, it would be out of the way of the user, except for the time when they configure which templates to show. 4) Should, I hope, not be difficult to implement. I'm not a C coder though, otherwise I would have tried doing it myself.
This is confusing for non-expert users and can lead to problems. Particularly to those used to the windows behaviour. I suggest (as others before me) creating a group of templates (openoffice word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) as the default set to ease the newcomers difficulties. As a matter of fact, a friend I introduced to Linux just realized all the documents she created using that method didn't have any format. She used a simple (although wrong) method to create Openoffice files. #1 Right Click inside folder - Create document - Empty File (Just as any windows user could do) #2 Rename document to whatever she wanted - Ex: Doc1.odt (this is a somehow advanced behaviour but still common for windows users). #3 Open file and ignore ASCII Filter Option message (whatever - OK) #4 Write in the document. #5 Save - Ignore warning about formating and Click on "Keep Current Format" instead of "Save in ODF format" (this could be seen as a huge mistake, and it is, but also a common behaviour if you are used to open DOC files with Openoffice. You end up ignoring those warnings). What I am proposing is to put template files for the most common document formats (at least openoffice ones) into the Templates folder by default. This way, the windows newcomers would find a Create Openoffice Word file option and avoid very damaging mistakes as the one explained before. Also, this would fill an usability gap between linux and windows.
*** Bug 616767 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 590666 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I don't think we want to expose this prominently in Nautilus. There may be room for an extension or other tool to do more here.