[ardour-users] Spaces in Ardour filenames

[Mike Jewell]

A recent short discussion on this list (subject: rename song) prompted
me to try to write a script to do this properly where you change the
project directory name, the names of any *.ardour* files (including
snapshots), the names IN the *.ardour* files (slightly different
requirement for snapshots), the names of the files in the automation
directory, etc.  This script would have been easy if it weren't for the
fact that Ardour likes to write a number of files with spaces in the
filenames.

I came up with a way to deal with that but it greatly complicated the
task and produced more than a few expletives! 

Maybe Paul or someone else can enlighten me as to why filenames are
written this way.  I've been involved with UNIX operating systems for 20
years and have counseled many a user to avoid spaces (and several other
special characters) in their filenames even though they have been
"legal" for some time now.  It just isn't smart or needed and it can
complicate many things and lead to screw-ups and lost data.  It also
seems like such a "Windowsy" kind of thing to do...    8^(

Another related issue is the way Snapshots are named.  They too have
spaces (lots of them) in the filenames and elsewhere but they also have
the problem that the default filenames are the date/time of creation but
if you load one and then do a "save", this filename is now meaningless
since it does not represent the "last" date of the file.  After all, who
cares when a file was created? (generally).  What's important is when it
was last modified.

Anyway, is there any way this (the spaces problem, mainly) could be
fixed before the much anticipated version 1.0 is released?  I think it
would improve the perceived "classyness" of the software especially with
experienced ???X users and make it much easier for everyone to work with
the files created.  This is especially important since some important
filing features like "Rename Project" are missing in the stock code.

Mike

Mike Jewell
One-Up Audio