File naming conventions

"Can you help me understand what some IT best practices are regarding file naming conventions? 

I love that I got asked that question.  I didn't have any official answers, except what works for me.

So I looked it up and found these resources:

https://datamanagement.hms.harvard.edu/plan-design/file-naming-conventions

https://datacarpentry.org/rr-organization1/01-file-naming/index.html

This is just the top level info from the Harvard site

Some Good and Bad Examples:

File names with no naming convention:

- Test data 2016.xlsx

- Meeting notes Jan 17.doc

- Notes Eric.txt

- Final FINAL last version.docx

 

File names with a naming convention:

- 20160104_ProjectA_Ex1Test1_SmithE_v1.xlsx

- 20160104_ProjectA_MeetingNotes_SmithE_v2.docx

- ExperimentName_InstrumentName_CaptureTime_ImageID.tif

Some of their overall tips (each is explained more on their site)

Tips for File Naming

- Identify metadata (for example, date, sample, experiment)

- What information is needed to easily locate a specific file?

- Use versioning

- What comes first?

- Deliberately separate metadata elements

- Avoid spaces or special characters in your file names

Gimp Export Layers as PNG

If PNG is an acceptable output format, one option is to export it as Open Raster (.ora), an open specification for layered-image files.

Export Image as Open Raster (.ora)

File -> Export As ...

myfile.ora

Open myfile.ora as an archive, with a program like file-roller or 7zip.

On Ubuntu:

$ file-roller myfile.ora

(alternatively)

$ unzip myfile.ora

Windows:
Rename extension .ora to .zip and extract all.

All your layers will be png images under /data, Extract them and use at will.

https://askubuntu.com/a/749561