FolderArtist

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📂️🎨️📁️💾️ The official source repository for FolderArtist, a tool for automating the process of adding icons to file folders.

Current challenges

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I need to find development time to work on this project
I don't know how to interact with any Linux API to be able to change folder art through a shell script
I need a maintainer for this project
I need to find out if this is a safe idea (see §Concerns)

Original draft

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The original concept draft for this project (written in quarter 4 of 2023)

FolderArtist

A tool to update folderart automatically

Write in: Shell

Detect a file sequence

{ /FolderArt/ }

- [ ] Apply folder art to source folder (i.e: /FolderArt/)
- [ ] Apply folder art to folder 1 layer deeper (i.e: /Cat-Pictures/FolderArt/)
- [ ] Apply folder art to folder 2 layers deeper (i.e: /Pictures/Cat-Pictures/FolderArt/) return error if non-existent
- [ ] Apply folder art to folder 3 layers deeper (i.e: /home/Pictures/Cat-Pictures/FolderArt/) return error if non-existent
- [ ] Custom pattern (depth)

{ /File.icons }

- [ ] Use first file in A-Z order
- [ ] Pick a random file

{ /File.types }

- [ ] Ignore JPG files
- [ ] Ignore JPEG files
- [ ] Ignore TIF files
- [ ] Ignore TIFF files
- [ ] Ignore BMP files
- [ ] Ignore RAW files
- [ ] Ignore XCF files
- [ ] Ignore KRA files
- [ ] Ignore JP2 files
- [ ] Ignore PNG files
- [ ] Ignore GIF files
- [ ] Ignore JIF files
- [ ] Ignore JFIF files
- [ ] Ignore SVG files
- [ ] Ignore PNS files
- [ ] Ignore PSD files
- [ ] Ignore WEBP files
- [ ] Ignore NETP files
- [ ] Ignore ICO files
- [ ] Ignore HEIF files
- [ ] Ignore DIB files
- [ ] Ignore EPS files
- [ ] Ignore PDF files
- [ ] Ignore files without an extension
- [ ] Only ignore specific image files when others are available

{ /Prog.config }

- [ ] Create .desktop entry files
- [ ] Create desktop.ini files

{ /Prog.de.config }

- [ ] Prefer GNOME 2
- [ ] Prefer GNOME 3
- [ ] Prefer GNOME 40
- [ ] Prefer KDE 3
- [ ] Prefer KDE 4
- [ ] Prefer KDE 5
- [ ] Prefer XFCE
- [ ] Prefer LXDE
- [ ] Prefer LXQT
- [ ] Prefer CINNAMON
- [ ] Prefer Windows Shell
- [ ] Prefer Aqua

Benefits

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Custom folder art can transfer between systems seamlessly through automation, rather than manual labor, and I won't have to redo the 4000+ folders on my new laptop.

Concerns

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I have been applying folder art manually, and I have noted that navigaging through folders get slower when doing lots of folder art modification, especially for large preview images. I fear that what I did (adding at least 4000 custom folder icons throughout my system) may be contributing to system instability. I fear doing this project and having an automatic process may cause extreme system instability, high memory usage, and crashes.
I feel this may be limited to certain desktop environments only. From testing, custom folder art has shown up only in Nautilus (GNOME/GNOME files) and not Dolphin (KDE/Dolphin)

Further documentation

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Further documentation is available in a separate repository (seanpm2001/FolderArtist_Docs/)

File info

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File type: Markdown (*.md *.mkd *.mdown *.markdown)
File version: 1 (2023, Monday, December 18th at 05:37 pm PST)
Line count (including blank lines and compiler line): 266
Word count: 1,411
Character count (including spaces): 09,666
Character count (excluding spaces): 08,079
Size (in bytes): 09,687
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