Besides, if you think that's polluted, then pushing it off to ~/.config and ~/.local/share is just sweeping it under the rug.
If you want to create a mess, you are free to do so with XDG variables. Read my other comments for that.
Stop pissing in my $HOME and don´t tell me I should have no problem with that. Just adhere to XDG, $HOME is for me and I decide what I want there. You don´t.
If you want to shit around in $HOME, you can make symlinks from $HOME or set your XDG-vars to $HOME.
In the non-XDG world we don´t have that control. Such software shits into $HOME, and it sticks there because it refuses to listen for user preferences (XDG-vars). As a user that deals with non-xdg software I don´t have control on the one directory that was meant for ME.
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The only improvement I can think of is that XDG would provide functions that software could call into instead of vars to get dir paths. That way, the user could have very fine control (even per application) when they write their own bash override.
> If I want .chromium, .0ad, etc. instead of .config, I'm SOL.
Technically not SOL, you just need to set the launcher of whatever binary to set the XDG env vars to $HOME/.programname on launch.
Or use links.