page filename starting with dot option

[Josef Dalcolmo]

I would like to have as an option, the filename of any page starting with a dot ".".
By creating a page "pagename", the underlying file would get the name .pagename.txt instead of just pagename.txt, while the attachment page still would be named pagename as before, without the dot in front.

That way the files associated with zim would become hidden under Linux, allowing me to sprinkle all these nice zim files in a shared directory tree with others, and they would not disturb my co-workers,
while I still could share the zim files with those who also use zim.
I could place all my to-do lists and links etc in zim, referring to the folders in an existing directory tree.

This would also avoid name clashes with other (non-zim) *.txt files.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to use a different extension instead of .txt, for example .zim (already used for a different purpose) or .zimtxt or .ztx. That would reduce name clashes with other text files as well (for those wikis not using hidden files). I know, this is a somewhat different issue, but could be implemented at the same time as the suggested dot feature.

In any case, Zim is the best tool I found so far for taking notes and keeping to-do lists. I have projects with dozens, even hundreds of folders with changing contents, and Zim helps me to keep notes on them.

- Josef

[Josef Dalcolmo (josef-dalcolmo)]

I see that bug #1607703 actually suggests an even better solution: the zim page should be inside the attachment folder, rather having the same name as the attachment folder. In other words it is the attachment folder name that determines the page name and the name of the .txt file could be set per notebook, but would then be the same for each page in the notebook. That way one could have the pages named README.txt or README.zim or .zim.txt or zim.page or whatever one fancies (except .zim and notebook.zim of course as these names are already used).

This solution would be least intrusive when using Zim to keep notes on the files within a file system. It would be least intrusive when the file structure is shared with others (via git or SVN for example).

I realize, though this is a serious change to the way zim works. Links to the attachments for example, will have to point to the same directory where the page is in, for example. Also, a directory (folder) would have to be created for each new page. If the folder with the notebook.zim file in it is supposed to be part of the zim structure, there could then only be one top level node (which I would prefer).