[Paraview] registry file?

[Kent Eschenberg]

My vote: I agree with Mike. I've written applications on Unix, Linux and VMS that use initialization files and found that it is a loosing battle to store them in non-standard places. It is *easy* for a piece of software to store them in the right place.

Small hints to the user can be a big help. 1) Whenever a new version of the initialization file is written by PV a brief popup could show its location. 2) If Qt won't play ball at least put in one of PV's "Settings" menus a note about how to find/edit the Qt settings.

Kent
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

Mike Jackson wrote:
> Ok, I can see that thought process, but users of each OS are used to the 
> way _their_ Operating system works. Having their preference file located 
> in a "non-standard" location is a "surprise" to the user and does not 
> make for a nice user experience. Having said that I do agree that if an 
> operating system's preference system can not handle the data that is 
> needed to be stored then that needs to be changed, but why punish all 
> operating systems for one's failure? As a "normal" OS X user that is 
> using ParaView, I would _expect_ my settings to be stored in 
> ~/Library/Preferences or _Maybe_ ~/Library/ParaView or _possibly_ 
> ~/Library/Application Support but NOT in .config/blah/blah/blah. So the 
> old argument comes up, what is "consistent". Should the app adapt to the 
> platform or should the user adapt to the App? I would vote for the app 
> to adapt to the platform. The support issues would be _less_ because 
> users can help themselves because they _know_ instinctively where to 
> look for application settings.
> 
> I'll leave it alone as there is nothing more I can say or debate.
> 
> Everyone have a great day. :-)
> 
> Peace.
> Mike Jackson