Ethereal-users: [Ethereal-users] Re: change location of preferences dir '.ethereal' on W2K (Guy
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 01:02:14 -0700
> From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: andreas.sikkema@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: gharris@xxxxxxxxx, ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Ethereal-users] change location of preferences dir
'.ethereal' on W2K
>
> This does raise a question.
>
> On UNIX, there's only the notion of a home directory for the user, which
> you can get from the password database, and to which the environment
> variable HOME is normally set.
>
> On Windows, there appears to be a home directory, the drive for which is
> in HOMEDRIVE and the path for which within that drive is in HOMEPATH.
>
> There's also, on NT 4.0, at least, the "profile" directory, which is
> under WINNT\Profiles, and has a name that's the user's logon name. A
> lot of programs store stuff there, and your desktop is in a directory
> "Desktop" under there.
>
> That behaves a *lot* like the home directory in UNIX. For example,
> right now, my desktop (KDE) is in a directory called, err, umm,
> "Desktop", under my home directory.
>
> In addition, I just created a user on my NT 4.0 partition; their
> HOMEDRIVE was set to "C:" and their HOMEPATH was set to "\", but their
> "USERPROFILE" was set to "C:\WINNT\Profiles\joebob".
>
> So which of those, in a shiny modern 32-bit application, *should* the
> application treat as the user's "home directory"? Is the "home
> directory" something dating back to 16-bit Windows and LAN Manager, with
> the profile being the shiny new home directory? Or is the profile an
> NTism, not present on Windows OT (95, 98, Me)? Or is the idea that you
> could have some information on your local machine, which is in your
> profile directory, and some information on your file server, which is in
> your home directory, so that you can get some stuff done even if the
> file server isn't responding? (And what about "roaming profiles"?)
>
> I.e., for storing preference information, personal filters, and the
> like, which of those directories - the profile directory, or the home
> directory - would be the most sensible Windows equivalent to the UNIX
> home directory?
>
> (Think twice before using the word "Registry" in your reply. :-) I
> guess we *could* tweak the preferences API in Ethereal so that we can,
> invisibly to the rest of Ethereal, stuff the preferences in the Registry
> on Windows, but that's a bit more of an undertaking....)
>
wouldn't be easier to propose the user as a option where he wants to put
his(her) preference files ?
furthermore on win2k : the application user directory is much like :
"c:\Documents and Settings\user\..."
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