quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
I know what n0n4m3 means though. I too hate it when each plugin (or program for that matter) starts saving stuff in places I don't like (doesn't matter where it is, it should always be customizable!).
Yes... That's true... Customization is the way..
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
But we are talking plugins here. Plugins aren't programs! And all plugin developpers know that all the plugins are stored in the same directory. So, IMO, no, it doesn't make sense that plugins save their data to the plugins folder (especially not when it isn't customizable); imagine that every plugin does this, you'll soon end up with a big mess in your plugins folder, not to mention possible file name conflicts...
IMO, Plugins, if they absolutely need to save a file, need to save this, by default, in a subdirectory of the plugins folder. Or in %appdir%\<program folder>. But mostly, it must be customizable by the user! This is the most logical and user friendly way to go... IMHO.
Subdirectories in the Plugins folder make a good alternative.. .. Infact it should really be comon sense, though I know I haven't been good at that.. But most of my plugins never really reach beyond Beta stage 
, and they have all the way just been experimental and in constant development.
The best alternative is to store the settings in the registry, and I like to store them in the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Patchou\MsgPlus2\<email>\Preferences\Plugins" key. This immediatly gives an organised "save setting" place, and I think most plugin developers do this?
If files are needed to be stored,
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[size=1]PS:
quote:
Originally posted by (CyBeRDuDe)
But then again, we would then have to make extra code to be backwards compatible with the older windows, since they don't have the same kinds of Application Data folder...
No you don't, you simply need to call the appropiate Window API's. There is an "application directory" in every Windows version.
Besides, even if there were no such API's, isn't making a plugin backward compatible and compatible with all possible Windows versions (which Plus! also can run on) the right thing todo anyways?
, yeah forgot about that. Of course it's easy finding the path to the AppData using the right API's, or just simple %AppData%, or the likes. Well, yes the right thing to do is to make all plugins compatible with older Windows, but this is just a pain for the developers, most plugins never reach out of testing stage, or they might be released as a final, but they will never truly be completed 100%, and spending time testing the plugins on other windows version and different scenarios is just to time consuming, where you would spent much time on this, you could instead be spending the time on making the plugin more usefull and more functionallity or better functionallity.
I myself personally don't care about compatibility with older windows, because I make these plugins for free, by own will, and by request. If there is a special request for it to be able to run on lets say Win98, I might do some research in it, but until now I haven't seen much requests like this... So, I guess there is not much demand for it?... But anyways, if it was a bigger plugin, a plugin/program that cost money you would more or less expect it to run on all versions, besides that then it's only a bonus if the plugin runs on Win98....
Also all the customization programming takes time... The worst part of making a plugin is to make it highly customizable and user-friendly... The hard-coding of the plugin is rarely the hardest/most time-consuming part of the creation of a plugin...
Though I myself likes it when the users have more customization freedom, like where to save settings etc.
Tobiaz:
You suggestion is good, and I will try to remember it from now on, or at least think more about what I do with my save settings and other data savings, but as long as plugins are beta's and only being tested by the people here that are willing to test these plugin you can't expect it to save data like that and customization of all stuff, but when a program is declared as "Final Version"/Out of testing, then it's a good idea that the programmers implement such things as saving to the application data folder...
.. Maybe we all could agree to save the data in "Application Data/MsgPlus Plugins/<Plugin Name>" since this would make sure that users don't suddenly have 100 different folders in their Application Data folder which already is filled with lots and lots of folders... Or something like that...
...
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