It should not be this hard for people to figure out how to get large numbers of files from their journal to another computer. When I think "hm, where would the picture I took with Record be stored?" my first instinct is not "of course, it must be ~/.sugar/default/datastore/store with cryptic alphanumeric-hashed filenames and no file extensions!"

Would it be possible to...

  1. Move the default "Journal stores things here" folder to ~/sugar/MyJournal or something like that? (Note 'sugar' instead of '.sugar' - not using a hidden folder makes this more discoverable. I wonder if this is more than a global find-and-replace of the path for any reason.)
  2. Make filenames of Journal items more identifiable - Karlie suggested using the first-created date and time (YYYYMMDDHHMMSS) as the beginning of the hash, and appending the filename extension, so for instance 20100217082415-asf693df7.png would at least tell me that this is an image I took on Feb 17, 2010, at 8:24:15am.

I know these things are probably never going to be seen by the vast majority of kids using Sugar, because we're trying to leave behind the file-and-folder metaphor, but Sugar is built on an OS that does use the file-and-folder metaphor, so this would make it easier for the hackers tinkering on the undersides to figure out the underlying structure for themselves.

Are there design decisions behind the current Journal storage format that I just don't know about? I'm honestly curious - it may be that a nested series of hidden folders is the right way to go for some reason I haven't figured out, and that it's worth the tradeoff - but right now I can't think of any.