Ubuntu Wiki

Use-Cases

• User A right clicks in nautilus, selects "create a document ..." and wants to get a list of document types to be created
• User B is concerned that the list of suggested document templates for the "create a document ..." will get too long quickly
• User S only wants to see his user configured templates and wants to be able to disable system shipped document templates easily

Design

Shipping template files

Plan A - ship templates in application package

• enable system templates support in nautilus
• ship templates in application packages
• policy: require package maintainers to get approval in #ubuntu-desktop meeting before adding system templates

Variant I: package managed

• allow users to disable system templates by uninstalling nautilus-system-template-support

Variant II: gconf managed

• allow users to disable system templates by flipping a gconf key

Plan B - ship templates in ubuntu-nautilus-templates

• enable system templates support in nautilus
• ship templates in ubuntu-nautilus-templates package
• fix nautilus to only show templates for which the associated binary is installed on system
• policy: additions to ubuntu-templates would be decided in #ubuntu-desktop meeting

Variant I: package managed

• allow users to disable system templates by uninstalling ubuntu-nautilus-templates

Variant II: gconf managed

• allow users to disable system templates by flipping a gconf key

User experience of editing templates

Currently the default desktop ships an empty ~/Templates folder that provides no context about what it's for or how to edit it. An info bar here can help, however most users will not want to edit these contents.

Plan A: Continue editing ~/Templates with nautilus

• Add a "Edit..." option to the Create document-> context menu for editing templates

• Add an infobar to nautilus when browsing ~/Templates to explain how to edit
• The Edit... button then sends the user to this folder
• May require special code for being able to "delete" system-wide templates

Variant I: hidden ~/.templates

• If the main user method of editing templates is to click the edit button on the context menu, then we can hide the Templates folder in the home folder. The home folder is already a bit crowded and, perhaps more importantly, the user is not supposed to store general files here (unlike in ~/Music or ~/Videos). "Templates" and "Examples" also have similar names.

Plan B: Template manager

• Create a separate program for managing templates
• Accessible by the same Edit... button as Plan A
• Could be taught to do all the gconf editing or package removal if we use that approach