I agree that seeing a bunch of ~/.<app> directories is annoying, but at the same time I do think that it makes sense for each application to manage its own hier

I agree that seeing a bunch of ~/.<app> directories is annoying, but at the same time I do think that it makes sense for each application to manage its own hierarchy, rooted under e.g. ~/.apps/<app> instead of splitting it into ~/.config/<app>, ~/.local/share/<app>, etc. Regardless, I think it probably makes sense to have a uniform interface for getting said directories, so that however the OS decides things should be laid out, the developer just needs to `local_config_dir(app_name)`. If the user (or at least administrator) can decide between <app>/<function> and <function>/<app>, all the better.