I read in another thread that it seems the MS expects programmers
to put INI and Config files in
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\xxx\Application Data"
folders. That's all well and good, except these folders normally
have their 'Hidden' flag set. For the vast majority of users who
never change their Explorer options from the defaults, Hidden
folders will never appear in File Open dialogs, and they'll be
invisible to most routine recursive file tree searches.
Given the choice between sticking common INI and config files
here vs. in the ExtractDirectoryPath( Application.EXEName) path,
the latter seems a bit safer from an end-user standpoint.
Using the former will potentially create a huge bottleneck for
customer support folks. To wit, if a user isn't normally logged
in as a user with Admin rights, they won't be able to get to
these files at all. If the DO have Admin rights, then they'll
be able to get to them, but not through Windows Explorer or any
other tools that rely on the Common DLLs that Explorer uses,
unless they change the options in Windows Explorer to allow them
to "View System and Hidden files". Then they'd have to remember
to have the user change it back!
Is it just me, or does this seem totally counter-productive?
One option would be to start including an INI and Config File viewer/editor/backup function in your apps from this point forward.
What do you think?
