On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:29:08 -0400, torhu <no@spam.invalid> wrote:
On 18.07.2011 15:55, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
...
Certainly not having that function on Windows will encourage them to
choose a wrong choice then, no? I mean if they want to find a "home
directory" and phobos doesn't support that, then they google online,
find
something like %userprofile%, use it, and maybe file a bug against
phobos
for good measure :)
So there is no right answer, we should at least come up with *an*
answer.
In the Windows world of de-facto standards, we're bound to start a
trend ;)
What about this?
~/Application Data => %APPDATA%
~/Local Settings/Application Data => %LOCALAPPDATA% or
%USERPROFILE%\Local
Settings\Application Data
etc.
Last resort:
~ => %USERPROFILE%
In other words, expand more than just the tilde.
Wouldn't that tend to cause the same issue? They use tilde on Linux,
then get %userprofile% because they didn't change it when they port to
Windows. If people know that they want %appdata%, they could just use
that.
So without expansion they get some local directory named ~ created (~ is a
valid directory name in Windows). That sounds worse...
I'd rather have it do something sane when I'm not smart enough to
special-code Windows stuff, but when I do want to handle it, I'd like to
not have to deal with the environment (i.e. differences between XP and
Win7).
My thoughts are, if we try and take a stab at making something
intelligently decide where to store files, people will appreciate it
more
than having to search the web for a right answer to something that
doesn't
have one.
That could be done, here's an example I'm familiar with:
http://www.allegro.cc/manual/5/al_get_standard_path
This is designed to work across all the major platforms. Some paths
will be the same on some platforms. ALLEGRO_USER_DOCUMENTS_PATH,
ALLEGRO_USER_DATA_PATH, and ALLEGRO_USER_SETTINGS_PATH are probably the
most relevant ones for this discussion.
I don't know if it's worth mapping the Windows directory scheme on to
Linux any more than it's worth mapping the Linux conventions onto the
Windows ones. The one thing that's common is, both have a OS-specified
location to store a specific user's file (Home directory). I realize that
using %USERPROFILE% is not *correct*. But it's better than doing
*nothing*.
So my view is:
~ => by itself it maps to your home directory, be that /home/you or
%USERPROFILE%.
~/xyz => on Linux maps to a subdirectory xyz under home, on Windows, may
be a more intelligent expansion.
-Steve
