Comment 3 for bug 132812

Whether backup copies should be renamed with their originals depends on the user's intent regarding the renaming. Consider the following use case:

Apollo would like to debug his browser by resetting its configuration. He renames ~/.browser, his browser configuration file, to ~/.browser.old. He doesn't notice that the backup copy remains in ~/.browser~ because backups are hidden in Nautilus. Apollo creates a temporary configuration file ~/.browser and edits it several times using gedit while debugging his browser. When he is finished, he moves the temporary configuration file to Trash and renames ~/.browser.old back to ~/.browser. But when Apollo looks at the backup copy at ~/.browser~, he is surprised. He expected to find the same backup copy of the original file that was there before, but he finds instead the second latest copy of the temporary configuration file saved by gedit.

Another use case about deleting sensitive information:

Venus saved drafts of her love letters to Apollo in her home directory. Now that her hot-tempered husband Vulcan will come back from a journey soon, she destroys the evidence by moving her letters to Trash and emptying the Trash. She is not aware that the backup copies remain, because she did not get any warning about them, and they are hidden by default. Venus also doesn't understand the Unix permission model and her home directory is world-readable. When Vulcan looks there, he will find the disgraceful letters.

Depending on the user's intent, sometimes the backup files should be treated as a single object with their originals, and sometimes not. What bothers me is that currently the user doesn't get to choose, and that leads to failures like those described in the use cases above.

The proper way to fix this from the usability point of view is to put the home directory under a version control system. Until that is widely accepted, a work-around is required. It could be a configuration option to treat the backups and originals as a single object, or it could be a set of warning dialogs that would notify the user that her action was not applied to some backup copies of selected files and ask whether she wants to rename/move/delete the backups as well.

The fix needs a bit more thinking before it can be implemented, but I hope the problem is clear now.