On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 09:45:45AM -0500, Mark H. Wood wrote:
> > Also, isn't that where *most* applications put their data, by default -
> > in some directory under your profile directory? (Presumably that's why
> > profile directories get put under "Documents and Settings" in NT 5.x.)
>
> Yes, and they're wrong.
Just out of curiosity, how many such applications come from Redmond,
Washington?
> The profile, proper, is for tiny things like
> shortcuts and other settings and preferences (think dotfiles), not for
> huge working files. Template files and such should go into
> %APPDATA%\vendor\product , for example.
...except perhaps for products where the "vendor" and the product have
the same name, which is why Ethereal just uses %APPDATA\Ethereal.
> I'd say the best default for capture files would be to ask the shell for
> the My Documents path.
Code to do so, and that works all the way back to Windows 95 and NT 4.0,
would be appreciated, unless we're willing to make a firm commitment to
say "Windows 98 or later, and NT 5.0^H^H^H^H^H^HWindows 2000 or later,
only" (in which case it'll probably be a while before I do any Ethereal
work on Windows, as I'll have to upgrade from NT 4.0; that might involve
moving a bunch of stuff off my C:-drive partition, as NT 5.x probably
won't fit).
> BTW *scratch* files should go in %TEMP%, if that wasn't obvious.
That's where we put the temporary files by default.