It's not convention, it's the defaults mandated by the standard. Following the standard... is just advisable.
If the normal is to use ${PREFIX:-/usr/local}/share for system wide shared data, then using ~/.local/share sounds like a good idea to me. I do however feel that $XDG_CONFIG_HOME should default to ~/.local/etc instead of ~/.config, or at least make the default for $XDG_DATA_HOME match it. Then again, I also think that $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS should default to /etc/ instead of /etc/xdg... but I didn't write the bloody standard ^_^. If by convention the files are normally hidden, cluttering the home directory with unhidden folders or even a ~/local directory would be equally counter productive, as making it ~/foorc instead of ~/.foorc!
At first, I did not like the whole XDG base directory crap, and I still think it has faults (^). But experience has shown me it is a lot better than having 30-40 dot files and folders littering my $ ls -a output, except when I am looking for old dot files to be removed. There should also be a make target/pkg_delete option for doing that from the package database, or whatever the OSes package management system is. Yeah, I'm lazy of finger.
What would be nice is if upstream projects would be willing to accept such patches to their source and documentation, even if all the work came from downstream. I fear however, many projects would simply say "No" or be unreachable for comment. If project maintainers would accept them, I'd take a few months to patch as many apps as I could...
__________________
My Journal
Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.
|