I don't use GNOME, but...

Posted Jan 27, 2010 8:46 UTC (Wed) by fperrin (subscriber, #61941)
In reply to: I don't use GNOME, but... by mjthayer
Parent article: Stormy Peters: What should the GNOME Foundation accomplish in 2010?

I'm not a native English speaker, but...

Don't folder and directory both come from The Real World, and both refer to a way of organizing subitems ? According to Wiktionary :

Folder : An organizer that papers are kept in, usually with an index tab, to be stored as a single unit in a filing cabinet.

Directory : A list of names, addresses etc., of specific classes of people or organizations, often in alphabetical order or in some classification.

From this, it could even by argued that "folder" is actually more precise than "directory"...

So, why 1) is "folder" such a bad synonym for "directory" according to GP, 2) is "directory" a more complex/technical word for "folder" according to parent ?

I don't use GNOME, but...

Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:14 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (2 responses)

Not a native English speaker too, and for me both are at about the same level of "intuitiveness". I mean, come on, this kind of discussion is sterile. The fact is that a disk folder/directory is only barely related to the real counter-part. Nobody is going to be fooled by calling it one or the other.
I suppose people prefer arguing these kind of little details because it's easier than get to the real problems.

I don't use GNOME, but...

Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:29 UTC (Wed) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] (1 responses)

I am a native english speaker, but I agree entirely. Also, "Folder" has an intuitive visual icon, whereas directory does not (what would it be, a picture of a telephone directory?). Even file managers that call them directories, tend to use icons that look like folders.

I don't use GNOME, but...

Posted Jan 27, 2010 16:27 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

The whole 'directory'/'folder' concept is just shit all around. It's a bad
abstraction and never really made sense. It was designed by Xerox as part
of a basic GUI to run a printer, FFS.

But it's one we are stuck with.

Folders make sense in Gnome because not everything you see as a folder is
really a directory on your file system. You have your 'fonts' folder. It
corrisponds with stuff that goes on in ~/.fonts, but only loosely. Same
things with folders when your using 'smb://' to view windows servers or
whatever.

There are all sorts of little things like that. It is really very bad and
makes things more confusing unless you happen to have a good understanding
of what is happening in a OS, but it mostly works as long as users don't
think about things too deeply.

You can thank Microsoft and Apple for this.