On 10 Oct 2008, at 6:06 pm, Kyle Sluder wrote:
You're going to be hardcoding the name of the folder anyway, whether that hardcoding happens to be in the form of a string in your source code or the CFBundleIdentifier in your Info.plist. Why needlessly inconvenience the user when you derive no benefit?
There's an obvious programmer benefit: I can write code that works correctly in any app I drop it into to read/write files in that folder without having to go in and customise it to each app. However, I would agree that programmer convenience should always take a back seat to user convenience, so the question remains what's best for the user.
I personally almost never have to dig around in Application Support folders. On the very rare occasions I've peeked in there it's not always obvious where to look - for example the common hierarchy of Company/App Name/Sub folders is particularly irritating for apps where the company that produced it is not immediately known. How many people recall that "Super Blogging App" was produced by "Back Shed Enterprises", or that "Office" was a product from some outfit called "Microsoft"? I mean, who? ;-) So a simple App name is easier to find, but then the potential for name collisions may be higher.
The use of the bundle identifier means that the app name is visible at the top level so it should be easier to fix on the right folder, but the extra components eliminate collisions. Whether it exposes too much geekery to the public? Maybe.
I do tend to agree that it's not a place users should be visiting routinely, and the app itself should offer an interface where necessary to manage its own stuff in there. As with prefs, odds are that the only time a user will ever go in there is to fix a problem with a damaged file, so there's no clear advantage to making it different from the preferences situation that I can see. Why is anyone poking around in there? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm interested in knowing what people do visit that folder for).
cheers, Graham _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
