From: Ann Barcomb
Date: 16:12 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Things I hate about iTunes
I hate the way iTunes refuses to distinguish between what I'm doing with it
actively, and what I'm doing with it passively. For instance:
1. It grabs focus from whatever I'm doing (be it something else with iTunes,
or a different application such as an xterm) when I insert a CD. It
should just rip it; I have it set to automatically rip when I insert a
CD. Don't bother me about it. This is especially annoying when I'm
trying to rerip my entire collection and do some work at the same time.
2. If I am listening to song A and fixing bad metadata for song Z, why
does iTunes think that when song A finishes and song B starts, I'd
like to lose edit mode and focus for song Z and gain focus on song B?
3. In a similar vein, if I was listening to song A and need to fix some
metadata on album M, and type something in the search to limit the
display to songs in album M, why won't iTunes move on to song B when
song A finishes? Oh, it must be because song B isn't visible in my
search results...but then, shouldn't it move on to the first song in
album M (still a bad choice, but at least understandable)? Instead
it just stops playing. Interestingly enough, if you are looking at
the CD it is ripping, instead of looking at a subsection of the
Library (and it is playing from the Library), it will manage to move
on to song B.
I hate the way it creates a directory 'Music/' in my home directory, when
I've already told it to store all the music elsewhere. The directory
contains your settings. Settings belong in a dot directory, not in
a directory with a capital letter.
I hate the way that it deals with albums without metadata. If you start
adding the metadata after you've already started ripping the album, the
result will be that the CD is nicely labeled, but the ripped tracks aren't.
I hate the way the interface allows you to edit some metadata by clicking
on it twice with a pause between (but make sure you include that pause,
or you'll start playing the song you're trying to edit), but won't let you
edit other metadata without 'File/Get Info' (a rather poorly named menu
item). 'Name' and 'Artist' and 'Album' are examples of the metadata you
can just edit, and 'Track #' is an example of one which requires you to
open this special dialog.
I hate the fact that some settings are in 'iTunes/Preferences'...and
some are in 'View/View Options'.
I hate the way it lets you set which fields you want to see with
'View/View Options', but some fields don't have the same support as
the default fields. For example:
1. You cannot sort by all fields ('Sort Composer' is an interesting example
of a field you can't sort by, although the subject would lead one to
think it is, in fact, a sorting field).
2. Some fields can be edited by clicking twice with a pause between clicks
(examples are 'Name', 'Artist' and 'Album'). Others can't be edited
unless you open a dialog with 'File/Get Info' (which is also a bad
name). 'Track #' is an example of this.
I hate the way it fools you by having a 'Radio' listing, but this only
includes radio stations Apple likes. If you want to listen to a different
radio station, you need to go to 'Advanced/Open Stream' and add the URL
manually.
I hate the options it has for copying to my iPod: either copy the
entire library, or manually select the playlists to copy. My library
is too large to fit on the iPod, but I constantly make new playlists
and delete old ones. Why isn't there a 'copy all playlists' option?
I could think of more, but then I'd be listing my dislikes as well
as my hates.
- Ann
From: Chris Nandor Date: 16:29 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes At 17:12 +0200 2007.04.04, Ann Barcomb wrote: >I hate the way it creates a directory 'Music/' in my home directory, when >I've already told it to store all the music elsewhere. The directory >contains your settings. Settings belong in a dot directory, not in >a directory with a capital letter. I hate dot directories; on a Mac, I consider them wrong. But you're right that it is questionable to have it where it is. Macs have a Library folder, and that is where it should be, in Library/Application Support/iTunes/. The rest of your hate I have no problem with. But PLEASE no more dot directories, unless you are a Unix app.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 16:42 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Chris Nandor wrote: > I hate dot directories; on a Mac, I consider them wrong. But you're right > that it is questionable to have it where it is. Macs have a Library > folder, and that is where it should be, in Library/Application > Support/iTunes/. > The rest of your hate I have no problem with. But PLEASE no more dot > directories, unless you are a Unix app. Why do you consider it wrong to have dot directories on a Mac? I think BSD underneath is one of the good points of OSX, so the Unix way of doing things makes sense. Note that I only want the configuration files to be hidden. It's probably appropriate to generate a bunch of directories for storing documents, labeled Pictures/ and Music/ and Documents/ and so on--provided that I can a) set the applications to use different directories by default, and b) remove the default directories I'm no longer using. Ordinary users wouldn't be affected by the hidden configuration files, because anyone who would consider editing them by hand (instead of using the applications) really ought to know how to find them. I have my own naming system for things, and seeing all these ucfirst directories messing up my sorting irritates me. This is all the more true when one of the directory names clashes with a name I want to use, in a different case. I hate the stupid case insensitivity of Macs. On my last laptop I went so far as to create a 'home/' directory in my home directory, and use it for all my stuff, while letting Apple have my default home directory. That was a pretty irritating solution. - A
From: Chris Nandor Date: 17:04 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes At 17:42 +0200 2007.04.04, Ann Barcomb wrote: >Why do you consider it wrong to have dot directories on a Mac? For the same reason you consider it right: because I see my preferred way as the proper convention. This is all and only about convention, what we expect and are used to and consider Right. I consider dotfiles and dotdirs for Mac apps to be Wrong. >I have my own naming system for things, and seeing all these ucfirst >directories messing up my sorting irritates me. What I am advocating would not be using an arbitrary ucfirsted directory. I am saying it should be in Library/Application Support/iTunes/. >I hate the stupid case insensitivity of Macs. No argument there. :)
From: David Cantrell Date: 20:11 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes Chris Nandor wrote: > At 17:42 +0200 2007.04.04, Ann Barcomb wrote: >> Why do you consider it wrong to have dot directories on a Mac? > For the same reason you consider it right: because I see my preferred way > as the proper convention. This is all and only about convention, what we > expect and are used to and consider Right. I consider dotfiles and dotdirs > for Mac apps to be Wrong. So the correct solution is for the application to have an option for how to store config information. The value of that option is, obviously, best stored by it editing its own executable. Or to create a directory just for itself in the root, because at least that would piss you *both* off.
From: Luke Kanies Date: 20:15 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:11 PM, David Cantrell wrote: > > So the correct solution is for the application to have an option > for how to store config information. The value of that option is, > obviously, best stored by it editing its own executable. > > Or to create a directory just for itself in the root, because at > least that would piss you *both* off. The correct solution is for the stupid operating system to realize that every stupid application stores defaults and shouldn't have to even think about this problem. We're talking about a trivial api, even if we're dealing with opaque data -- the stupid OS should decide, and the apps should write to that API. Even my own code doesn't decide things like this -- I write an API that handles picking file paths and opening file handles, and then all of my code uses that API. Boom. Done. I never think about paths again. I thought the whole point of an operating system was that it came with libraries so that people didn't have to do work unrelated to their specific application. Choosing where configurations are stored is pretty unrelated to what most of my applications do, and they should definitely be outsourcing it to the OS. And I also hate mailing lists that don't default to replying to the list. Sorry David. :/ -- Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question. -- Albert Camus --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 20:19 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 02:15:48PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote: > And I also hate mailing lists that don't default to replying to the > list. Sorry David. :/ There are many things hateful about Siesta, but I thought that one "feature" of it was an ability for the subscriber to choose the behaviour here. Nicholas Clark
From: Luke Kanies Date: 20:22 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:19 PM, Nicholas Clark wrote: > On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 02:15:48PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote: > >> And I also hate mailing lists that don't default to replying to the >> list. Sorry David. :/ > > There are many things hateful about Siesta, but I thought that one > "feature" > of it was an ability for the subscriber to choose the behaviour here. Having a default reply-to doesn't have much affect on my ability to choose the destination of the email, but it does mean that the default case (replying to the list) takes more effort than the non- default case (replying to an individual), which seems pretty silly. Thus, you (and yes, I mean you) have to hit reply-all, because that's the only way to reply to the list without messing with destinations, which means that I get two emails because the list's defaults don't match the behavioural defaults of its users. -- Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. -- George Jean Nathan --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: jrodman Date: 20:25 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 02:22:12PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote: > On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:19 PM, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > >On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 02:15:48PM -0500, Luke Kanies wrote: > > > >>And I also hate mailing lists that don't default to replying to the > >>list. Sorry David. :/ > > > >There are many things hateful about Siesta, but I thought that one > >"feature" > >of it was an ability for the subscriber to choose the behaviour here. > > Having a default reply-to doesn't have much affect on my ability to > choose the destination of the email, but it does mean that the > default case (replying to the list) takes more effort than the non- > default case (replying to an individual), which seems pretty silly. > > Thus, you (and yes, I mean you) have to hit reply-all Here's a nickel. Get a mailer that understands about list replies. It's right there in the headers. And yeah, I understand your view, but there's multiple reasonable views on how list replies should work and it's been debated a million times by now. This is a worn-out topic. -josh
From: Luke Kanies Date: 20:35 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:25 PM, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote: > > Here's a nickel. Get a mailer that understands about list replies. > It's right there in the headers. > > And yeah, I understand your view, but there's multiple reasonable > views > on how list replies should work and it's been debated a million > times by > now. This is a worn-out topic. You're the third person to reply to my list comment. You're the first not to hit reply-all (I assume as a way of getting around this limitation). As far as I can tell, the only mailer that does this "correctly" is mutt, and it's such a PITA to configure mutt to handle lists (i.e., it's per-list configurations) that I could never muster up the care to do it. No thanks. I'll pick my mail client for reasons unrelated to how it replies to lists, since the hate there is smaller than the hate I've experienced when trying to get mutt to behave in a way that doesn't make me want to start punching my computer. -- A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play. --Friedrich Nietzsche --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: David Cantrell Date: 20:47 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes Luke Kanies wrote: > As far as I can tell, the only mailer that does this "correctly" is > mutt, and it's such a PITA to configure mutt to handle lists (i.e., > it's per-list configurations) that I could never muster up the care to > do it. No thanks. I'll pick my mail client for reasons unrelated to > how it replies to lists Hear hear. If a list is broken, I can mostly fix that with procmail.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 20:31 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes * Luke Kanies <luke@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-04-04 21:25]: > Having a default reply-to doesn't have much affect on my > ability to choose the destination of the email, but it does > mean that the default case (replying to the list) takes more > effort than the non- default case (replying to an individual), > which seems pretty silly. > > Thus, you (and yes, I mean you) have to hit reply-all, because > that's the only way to reply to the list without messing with > destinations, which means that I get two emails because the > list's defaults don't match the behavioural defaults of its > users. Get a better mail client. mutt has that situation licked. (On the whole, I have to say I am mostly not hating it.) Mailing lists have been with us almost since the invention of SMTP; you'd think more MUAs would have native support for dealing with them. Regards,
From: Luke Kanies
Date: 20:38 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes
On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:31 PM, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
>
> Get a better mail client. mutt has that situation licked. (On the
> whole, I have to say I am mostly not hating it.)
Mmm, "better". I've tried to switch to mutt at least three times
over the last decade, and each time has been a miserable failure. I
shan't try again. The last time was specifically to use this nifty
list feature, but I was too offended by how you configure lists in
mutt to get very far.
> Mailing lists have been with us almost since the invention of
> SMTP; you'd think more MUAs would have native support for dealing
> with them.
Now *that* I agree with. And it should basically be automatic -- "I
notice you're getting mail from these X lists". Where's my drop-down
list of lists I get mail from? Should be trivial, I'd think.
--
Sapolsky's First Law:
Think logically, but orthogonally.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: demerphq Date: 20:24 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On 4/4/07, Luke Kanies <luke@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:11 PM, David Cantrell wrote: > > > > So the correct solution is for the application to have an option > > for how to store config information. The value of that option is, > > obviously, best stored by it editing its own executable. > > > > Or to create a directory just for itself in the root, because at > > least that would piss you *both* off. > > The correct solution is for the stupid operating system to realize > that every stupid application stores defaults and shouldn't have to > even think about this problem. We're talking about a trivial api, > even if we're dealing with opaque data -- the stupid OS should > decide, and the apps should write to that API. Even my own code > doesn't decide things like this -- I write an API that handles > picking file paths and opening file handles, and then all of my code > uses that API. Boom. Done. I never think about paths again. > > I thought the whole point of an operating system was that it came > with libraries so that people didn't have to do work unrelated to > their specific application. Choosing where configurations are stored > is pretty unrelated to what most of my applications do, and they > should definitely be outsourcing it to the OS. Didnt you just describe the windows registry? Yves
From: Luke Kanies Date: 20:29 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:24 PM, demerphq wrote: > > Didnt you just describe the windows registry? A) A horrible implementation doesn't prove the idea is invalid, and B) no, I didn't, because I'm just talking about abstracting file locations, not forcing every configuration file to act like a database. I actually like the idea of the OS at least offering an extended configuration API that allows the application to act like it's writing to a database and completely ignore any file information, but I would still implement it so that it wrote each configuration to a separate file, rather than having this one, gigantic database whose failure brings your system to its knees. Given that I spend a lot of my time writing parsers and generators for random applications (for Puppet[1]), I know how much pain is caused by every application being encouraged to write its own stupid configuration file format. I laugh when people say "standard INI", because there's no such thing that I can see. Yuck. 1 - http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet -- The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep. --Alan Patrick Herbert --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: Patrick Quinn-Graham Date: 20:48 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On 4-Apr-07, at 12:29 PM, Luke Kanies wrote: > On Apr 4, 2007, at 2:24 PM, demerphq wrote: >> >> Didnt you just describe the windows registry? > > A) A horrible implementation doesn't prove the idea is invalid, and > B) no, I didn't, because I'm just talking about abstracting file > locations, not forcing every configuration file to act like a > database. > > I actually like the idea of the OS at least offering an extended > configuration API that allows the application to act like it's > writing to a database and completely ignore any file information, > but I would still implement it so that it wrote each configuration > to a separate file, rather than having this one, gigantic database > whose failure brings your system to its knees. As it happens Mac OS X does have such a system - provided by NSUserDefaults. That results in things ending up in ~/Library/ Preferences/(identifier).plist. The only thing is I don't think it'd cope particularly well with database the size of the average iTunes library. Of course, it could use this as a pointer to where it could find the library file. You can of course start iTunes while holding down the option key, which allows you to use a library from a location other than ~/Music/ iTunes/ ~patrick
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 21:05 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Patrick Quinn-Graham wrote: > You can of course start iTunes while holding down the option key, which > allows you to use a library from a location other than ~/Music/iTunes/ Would this change the location of either 'Music/iTunes/iTunes Library' or 'Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml'? Would that, in conjunction with going to the Preferences and under the General section setting a different 'iTunes Music folder location' (actual file storage), enable me to delete the ~/Music directory? Just curious. - Ann Ps. Another thing I hate about the OS X window manager is that it just gives you click focus, and there's no option for mouse focus.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 20:33 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes * demerphq <demerphq@xxxxx.xxx> [2007-04-04 21:30]: > On 4/4/07, Luke Kanies <luke@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > >The correct solution is for the stupid operating system to > >realize that every stupid application stores defaults and > >shouldn't have to even think about this problem. We're > >talking about a trivial api, even if we're dealing with opaque > >data -- the stupid OS should decide, and the apps should write > >to that API. > > Didnt you just describe the windows registry? Or GConf. Both of which are incredibly hateful (for different reasons). Regards,
From: Chris Nandor Date: 20:43 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes At 14:15 -0500 2007.04.04, Luke Kanies wrote: >The correct solution is for the stupid operating system to realize >that every stupid application stores defaults and shouldn't have to >even think about this problem. We're talking about a trivial api, >even if we're dealing with opaque data -- the stupid OS should >decide, and the apps should write to that API. That is what Mac OS X does do. See NSUserDefaults for Cocoa, CFPreferences for Carbon. Also see the "defaults" command-line app. Now, that's primarily for the basic defaults, stuff in Library/Preferences/, which is apparently what you are talking about. But it may not be good enough for the stuff Ann meant, the iTunes library data. I still think is best put in Library/Application Support/ ... the only justification for putting it where it goes is that you could argue the library data belongs with the music itself, but then why does it remain there when the music is elsewhere? It should be under Library/ somewhere. >And I also hate mailing lists that don't default to replying to the >list. Sorry David. :/ I hate mailing lists that let complaints about technical aspects of the mailing lists get through to the rest of the list. ;) But then again, for this particular list, to reject such complaints would be more than a little hypocritical.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 01:27 on 05 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes > The correct solution is for the stupid operating system to realize > that every stupid application stores defaults and shouldn't have to > even think about this problem. We're talking about a trivial api, > even if we're dealing with opaque data -- the stupid OS should decide, > and the apps should write to that API. Even my own code doesn't > decide things like this -- I write an API that handles picking file > paths and opening file handles, and then all of my code uses that API. > Boom. Done. I never think about paths again. Apple has this. The command line program to manipulate it is called "defaults". The files it manipulates are stored in ~/Library/Preferences, but the application isn't supposed to care about that.
From: Adam Atlas Date: 17:16 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On 4 Apr 2007, at 11.42, Ann Barcomb wrote: > Why do you consider it wrong to have dot directories on a Mac? > I think BSD underneath is one of the good points of OSX, so the > Unix way of doing things makes sense. It's fine for Unix programs running on OS X to make dot directories. But for actual OS X programs, the convention is to make a subdirectory of ~/Library or ~/Library/Application Support. Following those just makes it easier to find things where one would expect. Of course, Apple violates their own "conventions" and "guidelines" all the time. Though it's okay to not follow conventions/guidelines to the letter if it doesn't feel right in the situation, I rarely see any such justification when Apple does this.
From: Luke Kanies Date: 17:33 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Apr 4, 2007, at 11:16 AM, Adam Atlas wrote: > > It's fine for Unix programs running on OS X to make dot > directories. But for actual OS X programs, the convention is to > make a subdirectory of ~/Library or ~/Library/Application Support. > Following those just makes it easier to find things where one would > expect. > > Of course, Apple violates their own "conventions" and "guidelines" > all the time. Though it's okay to not follow conventions/guidelines > to the letter if it doesn't feel right in the situation, I rarely > see any such justification when Apple does this. Urgh. The best you can come up with is hating where the file is located? I'm apparently the only person in the world who uses multiple computers, often with the same set of software on them, along with multiple platforms, also often with some cross-over in software, and who doesn't want to go through the effort of separately managing all of their configurations. I long-ago moved to app-specific subdirectories for my configurations, because it's too annoying trying to version-control ~, so I have ~/etc (this is a good bit before OS X). I've started to put things in ~/Library into svn, but we all know how well binary files work in version control. Amazingly, iTerm -- you know, the app that purportedly enables you to use text to interact with a computer -- uses a binary configuration file. It also seems to behave entirely arbitrarily when it comes to copying/pasting carriage returns -- sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't (sometimes within the same copy!), but I'm assuming that's a "feature" (although not one I can figure out how to disable). It also helpfully has 19 different kinds of configuration (e.g., Preferences vs Profiles), and as far as I can tell, they're stored in different configuration files. You can completely forget doing a merge of your configuration files. I personally don't care where my configuration files are, as long as I get the same configurations on all compatible machines and I don't have to struggle to maintain that. Given my experience in managing lots of machines, I usually find it's easier to have per-application directories, rather than dotfiles, but it's not a big problem either way. I'm still a bit amazed that an OS vendor hasn't built an abstraction layer for configurations, and then supported off-machine configuration storage (either they store them centrally, or I store them on my own server), so that I can manage all this crap without having to worry about it. You'd think they'd want to make it *easier* to own multiple computers, not harder. Instead, everyone buys a laptop and deals with the horror of connecting and disconnecting multiple external devices all the time. I don't care what your experiences are, it drives me *insane* when all of my windows resize themselves every time I connect to an external monitor, usually according to their own arbitrary rules (e.g., iTerm's "Only Maximize Vertically" weirdness). And I actually do have some processes that need to be on the 'net all the time, so laptops just don't suffice for that. Or, if people aren't using laptops for everything, they're moving to an all-web world just because it's annoying to manage fat-client configurations. Really. The biggest reason I can think of to use thin clients instead of fat clients is that it makes it easy to use the same configuration in multiple places (well, it makes it a bit easier to upgrade, too, but only because package managers suck). It's pretty embarrassing that this is the motivation for this huge "revolution" in user applications. I really thought multiple computers was annoying in 1997, but I really figured there'd at least be progress on it by now. -- Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. --Barry LePatner --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
From: jrodman Date: 19:59 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 05:42:05PM +0200, Ann Barcomb wrote: > On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Chris Nandor wrote: > > >I hate dot directories; on a Mac, I consider them wrong. But you're right > >that it is questionable to have it where it is. Macs have a Library > >folder, and that is where it should be, in Library/Application > >Support/iTunes/. > > >The rest of your hate I have no problem with. But PLEASE no more dot > >directories, unless you are a Unix app. > > Why do you consider it wrong to have dot directories on a Mac? > I think BSD underneath is one of the good points of OSX, so the > Unix way of doing things makes sense. It is interesting that the freedesktop people, who are sort of becoming the guardians of the free unix application conventions, are migrating away from dotdirs, in a way. New apps are now tending to keep their config cruft under ~/.config/<appname>, which is a bit similar to ~/Library/blah As for which aspects of this are hateful, I leave as your various personal decisions. -josh
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 20:25 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote: > It is interesting that the freedesktop people, who are sort of becoming > the guardians of the free unix application conventions, are migrating > away from dotdirs, in a way. > > New apps are now tending to keep their config cruft under > ~/.config/<appname>, which is a bit similar to ~/Library/blah I think I wasn't clear in my hatred. I like having all my configurations in one directory. As someone else mentioned, it is easier to keep things under revision control that way. I just want said directory to be invisible to a normal 'ls'. '.config' is great. 'Library' is mildly irritating (or would be, if it was the only required directory--as it is, with it being just one of many, it is hateful). - Ann
From: jrodman Date: 20:37 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 09:25:42PM +0200, Ann Barcomb wrote: > On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote: > > >It is interesting that the freedesktop people, who are sort of becoming > >the guardians of the free unix application conventions, are migrating > >away from dotdirs, in a way. > > > >New apps are now tending to keep their config cruft under > >~/.config/<appname>, which is a bit similar to ~/Library/blah > > I think I wasn't clear in my hatred. > > I like having all my configurations in one directory. As someone else > mentioned, it is easier to keep things under revision control that way. > > I just want said directory to be invisible to a normal 'ls'. '.config' > is great. 'Library' is mildly irritating (or would be, if it was the > only required directory--as it is, with it being just one of many, it > is hateful). Apologies, the lack of clarity was mine. I understand the whole "wtf is this stupid directory doing in my home directory" thing. It's pretty damn awful. I have a cronjob that rmdirs ~/Desktop for this reason. I was just being discursionary about the "where do the config files go" thing. I was just leaving it ambiguous as to which way to hate it. Options: - This is unix, and you're hiding the config crap where I won't think to look for it. (For example, where did those several gigs go? oh, all those files I delted are hiding in ~/.local/share/Trash How obvious) - As apps adopt this the location of your configuration data must be silently moved around your personal space, there will be risks of being unable to downgrade. - Why did it take 3 decades for Unix people to start correcting the error of the lamest namespace hack ever, when filesystems already had first class namespace support, ie. directories. - Who let these freedesktop people take charge of these decisions. They're obviously eager to recreate long-understood mistakes. There are probably others. -josh
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 20:51 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote: > Apologies, the lack of clarity was mine. I understand the whole "wtf is > this stupid directory doing in my home directory" thing. It's pretty > damn awful. I have a cronjob that rmdirs ~/Desktop for this reason. I guess I could do that, and I can remove Pictures whenever I'm not using my scanner. But then I'd still be left with Library and Music. I don't see any real advantage to having 2 instead of 4 when what I want is 0. :/ > I was just being discursionary about the "where do the config files go" > thing. I was just leaving it ambiguous as to which way to hate it. > Options: > - This is unix, and you're hiding the config crap where I won't think to > look for it. (For example, where did those several gigs go? oh, all > those files I delted are hiding in ~/.local/share/Trash How obvious) As long as there is still the other interface for getting rid of these things, this wouldn't be too bad. So you could go to Trash and tell it to dump everything. But that's another hate: deletes which don't delete. I just freed up 3% of my harddrive space by forcing it to dump the trash. I ought to find where that stupid thing is and link it to /dev/null. If I wanted pseudo deletion, I'd check the file into a repo and remove it from head. [...] I'm afraid I can't see anything particularly hateful about what you described. It sounds like my first choice for configuration files.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 21:05 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes At 21:51 +0200 2007.04.04, Ann Barcomb wrote: >But that's another hate: deletes which don't delete. I just freed up >3% of my harddrive space by forcing it to dump the trash. I ought >to find where that stupid thing is and link it to /dev/null. If I >wanted pseudo deletion, I'd check the file into a repo and remove it >from head. [pudge@bourque pudge]$ ls -lair ~/.Trash/ total 0 382007 drwxr-xr-x 83 pudge pudge 2822 Mar 22 10:24 .. 11330762 drwx------ 2 pudge pudge 68 Apr 4 10:30 . Damned dot-dirs! :-)
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 16:31 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes * Ann Barcomb <ann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-04-04 17:20]: > I hate the way it fools you by having a 'Radio' listing, but > this only includes radio stations Apple likes. If you want to > listen to a different radio station, you need to go to > 'Advanced/Open Stream' and add the URL manually. When I last used iTunes a few years ago on the Mac in the lab, I used the netradio directory a lot to put on some ambient music while working. I like some of the streams so much I wanted to listen to them at home, too. Try as I might, I couldn't find any way whatsoever to find out the URL for a stream. I hope they've added one in the meantime. Regards,
From: Sean O'Rourke
Date: 17:01 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes
Ann Barcomb <ann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> writes:
> 1. It grabs focus from whatever I'm doing
Enough said. Is there any situation where it's non-hateful for
any software to leap to the foreground of its own volition?
Classic example: opening an application on the Mac:
* Click on dock icon or launch with quicksilver
* Listen to disk grind; watch icon bounce
* Wait for my foreground window to get a gray title
* Alt-tab back to what I'm actually doing
I've been so well-trained at this that I hardly even think about
how annoying it is.
Related hate: some evil javascript incantation that grabs
keyboard focus from the frontmost tab in Safari without switching
to the offending tab.
> I hate the way it creates a directory 'Music/' in my home
> directory,
At least it's not "My Music". What's with those lame
Microsoft-inspired names? It's *my* home directory on *my*
computer -- of course it's mine! FFS!
/s
From: Ann Barcomb
Date: 17:11 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes
On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Sean O'Rourke wrote:
> Related hate: some evil javascript incantation that grabs
> keyboard focus from the frontmost tab in Safari without switching
> to the offending tab.
I wouldn't want it to switch to the tab or grab focus. Just wait
until I get around to looking at it. Bounce a tiny bit from the
dock, perhaps, but otherwise leave me alone.
Hmm, I already complained about this in Mozilla:
http://kudra.hates-software.com/2004/06/04/2b8a8431.html
> At least it's not "My Music". What's with those lame
> Microsoft-inspired names? It's *my* home directory on *my*
> computer -- of course it's mine! FFS!
Although I didn't mention that in my earlier hate on ScanGear,
I was thinking the same thing. Gee, it's a 'Pictures' directory
inside my home directory. And inside that is a 'My Pictures'
directory. Because otherwise, I might mistake them for someone
elses' pictures. After all, I have all of 1 account on this
computer.
- A
From: Paul Mison
Date: 17:04 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes
On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 05:12:31PM +0200, Ann Barcomb wrote:
> You cannot sort by all fields ('Sort Composer' is an interesting example
> of a field you can't sort by, although the subject would lead one to
> think it is, in fact, a sorting field).
It is a sorting field, which means you can't sort by it. If you want to sort
by composer, then sort on the composer field. If you want to modify how a
particular composer sorts, edit the Sort Composer value.
http://blech.vox.com/library/post/sort-fields-in-itunes-71.html might be
worth reading. As I say at the end: "I'd rather not have had the option to
view sort fields in the library, and instead get a more sensible way of
applying sort fields to multiple tracks".
ps I hate dotfiles and dot-directories too. ~/Library/Application Support/
gets my vote too.
From: Andrew Black - lists Date: 17:33 on 10 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes Ann Barcomb wrote: > I hate the way iTunes refuses to distinguish between what I'm doing with it > actively, and what I'm doing with it passively. For instance: > > 1. It grabs focus from whatever I'm doing (be it something else with > iTunes, > or a different application such as an xterm) when I insert a CD. It > should just rip it; I have it set to automatically rip when I insert a > CD. Don't bother me about it. This is especially annoying when I'm > trying to rerip my entire collection and do some work at the same time. I don't use iTunes and I don't understand the iReligion that says that any iWord beginning with a small i must be great but ..... It really annoys me when a window on any OS pops up takes and takes focus from what you are doing. The worst case is when you are half way through typing in a password and it appears in clear text on a reminder window.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 02:04 on 11 Apr 2007 Subject: Re: Things I hate about iTunes * Andrew Black - lists <andrew-lists@xxxx.xxxxxx.xxx.xx> [2007-04-10 18:40]: > It really annoys me when a window on any OS pops up takes and > takes focus from what you are doing. The worst case is when you > are half way through typing in a password and it appears in > clear text on a reminder window. Guess why I have Gaim configured to open new conversations as tabs into an existing chat window, and I always keep a chat window open on a workspace I'm not looking at... Regards,
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