GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 341135
confusing presentation of home
Last modified: 2012-08-02 12:27:37 UTC
My home which is /home/stefan, aka ~ is shown localized as 'Persönlicher Ordner'. I don't know how it would be shown in english. I can't see any reason for this. If you're using the commandline or none-gnome-applications (like mc), there is no 'Persönlicher Ordner' nowhere. This name is only used in Nautilus (and in the 'File open/ save'-dialogs). Why is this? It doesn't help much in understanding, why and how to use your home. Imho, every exception from common usage of something should be well thought of, and this one isn't. I know mount-points and symbolic links on the filesystem, and they work transparently, idependent of the interface the user uses. 'Persönlicher Ordner' doesn't work on the commandline, nor in the browser (file://Persönlicher Ordner). People used to linux know where /home/stefan is, and people who are novices should know where there files are and not be confused by additional names. Other information: The name 'Persönlicher Ordner' is ugly.
Since this should be a controversal thing, I guess we should involve the usability-maint guys.
Would adding home:// and desktop:// in gvfs help?
My home is /home/stefan - home:// is very close to /home/ and will confuse beginners. Why dont the fileviews show /home/stefan, /home/martin or /home/marcus? IMHO the place where I store my files should be transparent, and if you switch the user interface, from nautilus to firefox, from gedit to midnight-commander, from eclipse to something else, it should be consistent. It would be obvious if it was simply named /home/marcus - even for non english speakers "my home is my castle" or "home is where the heart is" are well known idioms. 'Persönlicher Ordner" is a monstrosity, and misleading too, since every directory below my home is my personal folder. I don't see how adding two entries to gvfs would help. Would they show up exactly like this in the file-dialogs?
Actually it's not completly safe to say the home folder is /home/myname - it could be anything, like /nfs/a/amaca or something along that line and I don't think that is very attractive to the user. In swedish the home folder on the desktop is called "Hem" (home), probably better then your "Personal files/folder" you have in german. But I do understand your point, but still, many users have no idea of the concept of files and folders. And in gnome a lot of work has gone in to not showing the "/" between the folders and files to help this (I think).
A user who managed to make his home /nfs/a/amaca will not be surprised, if it is shown to him as /nfs/a/amaca - will he? But why isn't joes home /nfs/a/amaca linked or mounted to /home/joe? Supposed a well informed admin set the system up for multiple less informed users. What is wrong with path-separators? Nobody is too stupid to understand that. Don't underestimate the users. Using them consistently will help the user understand. Showing him sometimes this, sometimes that, makes it hard to understand.
Do you also think that when the user has connected his cdrom or usb disk, the icon that appears on the desktop should be named /media/cdrom-2 or /media/disk-1 ?
A good question. I would seriously think about that. When I insert a cd, i.e. a Squeak-CD from a book, it shows up as 'SQUEAK' in Thunars favorites-bar, and in the addressfield as /media/cdrom0. Does the user need to know where to find it in the filesystem? Well, maybe sometimes. It will depend much on his tasks. A difference to the users home dir is, that the user might have multiple drives, multiple usb-disks, and plug in his media here or there in changing orders, so sometimes a media would show up as xy1, sometimes xy2 or 3. And a meaningfull name might get picked from the media. "SQUEAK" is a meaningful name for a Squeak-CD, and for Joes home /home/joe is a meaningful name. If you have a folder "personal folder", especially at the beginning, and two users, and both have subfolders photos, music, textfiles, images, but the image of user Joe is gone when Josefine logged in - it's less informative, it's labelled 'personal folder' but it is not that personal as /home/joe. And I guess the actions, performed in /home/joe and its subfolders are much more versatile, so the chance to need to know the position in the filesystem is higher - but that's just guessing.
Stefan, I think you just want to change the german translation of the Home place - in swedish I'm happy with the name. I don't think that putting a text like /home/myname under the icon would help anyone. How would the exact path to the home (or disk, cdrom, link) help the user? Like the .desktop files just shows the title of the application and not the complete command line...
I'm thinking in the opposite direction. If you just allways use the same GU-interface, you will find your home, of course. You would find it too, if it was labelled "/home/joe". But if you change to another program, which doesn't use that interface, you don't have 'Persönlicher Ordner' anymore, not in the shells I know, not in midnight-commander, not in firefox, not in any Java-Open-File-Dialog. It's inkonsistent. And what's the reason? Where is the advantage of that alias?
This bug was reported against a version which is not supported any more. Developers are no longer working on this version so there will not be any bug fixes for it. Can you please check again if the issue you reported here still happens in a recent version of GNOME and update this report by adding a comment and adjusting the 'Version' field? Again thank you for reporting this and sorry that it could not be fixed for the version you originally used here. Without feedback this report will be closed as INCOMPLETE after 6 weeks.
The localized string is shown because we use xdg-user-dirs. (In reply to comment #0) > If you're using the commandline or none-gnome-applications (like mc), there is > no 'Persönlicher Ordner' nowhere. I don't expect an average user to use the commandline, and a commandline user can be expected to be aware of the concept of /home/username.
Would that be preferable to have the username displayed for the home folder? Here are screenshots from a custom patched nautilus: http://solusos.com/wp-content/uploads/PathbarWrong.png http://solusos.com/wp-content/uploads/PathbarRight.png My 2 cents: * this would accustom users to the fact their home folder is named by their username. It's more consistent with the way filesystem works, and not complicating their understanding of folders. * This would lead to more clear names, no approximations like "Persönlicher Ordner" or "Dossier Personnel" * This would prevent confusing situations like the one on the first screenshot (displaying home/Home in the path bar) That bug needs to be renamed something like 'display username as the home folder label', if noone is opposed to that
@nodiscc: Yes, for me, it would be preferable. @André Klapper: It's not only the problem of being aware of something, it is too about learning where in the filesystem this folder is and how to support the user by lerning this, and it is about the convenience, when you cut and paste a longer path from the user interface or to the user interface, as well as communicating problems in international forums and the like (askubuntu). And the average user might not use the command line, but he might have a problem where somebody else encourages him to do something in the shell, or to write a path into a configuration file. Now the user is trained to lern something which is completely strange to him: /home/joe. If we use the username, it is new for a new user, as every other option is new and needs to be understood and learned. It is not just learned from the name. But train the people to use "Hem", "Home" or "Persönlicher Ordner", then you need sometimes to teach them something new and surprising. And you have to explain, why the folder is called /home/joe but displayed as Home, while /usr/bin is shown as /usr/bin and /etc is shown as /etc.
I'm still using Xubuntu 10.04 with Nautilus 2.30.1 - well, I'm not really using nautilus but either the shell, or midnight commander, but I just started nautilus and found it to be said version, and it displays, to my great pleasure, "stefan" (aka joe). Much thanks from my side. So I change the status to "resolved/fixed"? I do so.
@Stefan: no, sorry it can't be set to resolved/fixed: latest versions of nautilus (3.x) use "Home" to show the user's home directory. I well remembered previous versions showing the plain user name, like "stefan" or "joe" in the path bar - you just confirmed it was the case in 2.30. This was preferable in my point of view, for the reasons invoked in comment 12 and comment 13 So, maybe this should be reverted to the old behavior? Feedback from the usability team would be welcome. Thanks to you all for your input.
At 3.0 time, it was decided to consistently use Home - see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341894
Thanks for the info, but I wouldn't call it "consistently", since other UIs don't call it "Home", in the shell, that name is unknown, it is unknown in firefox, isn't it?
(In reply to comment #17) > Thanks for the info, but I wouldn't call it "consistently", since other UIs > don't call it "Home", in the shell, that name is unknown, it is unknown in > firefox, isn't it? If with firefox/eclipse/etc you're referring to the file chooser, that should be fixed there instead. I don't think it's worth it to be consistent with the terminal, for reasons explained already here and in the other report.
> If with firefox/eclipse/etc you're referring to the file chooser, that should be fixed there instead. Forwarded to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681065. GtkFileChooser still displays the username for the Home folder