Re: Control hidden folder/file settings?

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:51:35 GMT, mayayana staggered into the Black Sun
and said:
> Dances With Crows wrote:
>> mayayana wrote:
>> > all program subfolders in a user's home folder are hidden
>> I think you mean "all directories and files that start with a . are
>> hidden", not "all program subfolders".
> A large number of programs have a user settings folder under the home
> folder. That's what I meant by "program subfolders". I have maybe
> 15-20 folders for various installed software. They're all marked
> hidden.

Let's try this again: They're *not* "marked hidden". In Unix, there's
no "hidden" file attribute. All Unix-ish file-handling programs treat
files that begin with a . specially, and usually hide those files from
users in normal interfaces. You have some control over this (ls -a,
View->Show Hidden Files in Konqueror, etc.)

>> Applications may make it easy or difficult to find hidden files in
>> their file open dialogs. It all depends on which toolkit was used.
> I haven't tried browsing from a variety of programs. I just assumed
> that it was a system-wide file dialogue.

? You're new to this whole thing, I see. Didn't you wonder why GTK+
applications had different-looking "open file" dialogs from KDE
applications? And why Firefox's open file dialog looked different from
either? There's no "system-wide file open dialog" in X. There are only
conventions that are used.

> (The one time that I did try entering the hidden path by hand it was
> not recognized.)

This is more troubling. Which version of which application were you
using, and was it KDE, GTK+, or something else? Are you sure you didn't
make a tyop?

>> I don't think it's currently possible to set things up so that
>> "directory .crud is hidden, but directory .stuff isn't hidden" is
>> true in Konqueror. ICBW. Check your file manager's docs for
> I see. I was hoping for a system-wide configuration setting that would
> redefine the prepended "." as visible.

There isn't one. You have to set this in your file manager or your
individual app. If you use Konqueror, you can use View->Show Hidden
Files (or F8 in KDE apps' open file dialogs). Similar things exist for
GNOME apps.

> It appears my only option is probably going to be if a specific
> program provides the option to change the /home/username/programfolder
> path.

This is usually hardcoded in the app for obvious reasons. Fortunately,
most apps have source available, so you can change the default directory
by grepping for ".appname" and changing it to "appname", then
recompiling and reinstalling. This is usually a long run for a short
slide, though, so not many people do that.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/ penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
.

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