POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.bugreports : Installation into "My Documents": All Scenes Lost! : Re: Installation into "My Documents": All Scenes Lost! Server Time
15 May 2024 19:26:01 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Installation into "My Documents": All Scenes Lost!  
From: clipka
Date: 13 Sep 2009 05:16:22
Message: <4aacb866@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich schrieb:
> I would recommend reading a bit on he web how to keep backups. A copy in 
> the same folder, on the same harddisk, or the same system for that 
> matter is not a backup. It is a space-wasting copy.

Well, not necessarily: It may also be a poor man's version archieval 
system. Still not a backup however.

>> - Stupid or not, but why to move a person's file first-hand? That is 
>> the question. make it optionally.
> 
> Because they never were your files! All what happened is that POV-Ray's 
> *own* folder was moved, and you happened to be storing your data there 
> where it did not belong.

What I do concede to Sven is that the folder being named "scenes" gives 
no hint that this is supposed to be only the samples scene. Plus, I'm 
not sure but I think when POV-Ray is first started up, both its "Open 
File..." and "Save As..." paths default to that very folder.

And unfortunately, other software used to be so poorly designed, 
*requiring* user data to be stored somewhere in the "Program Files" 
folder, that it is tempting to assume that POV-Ray might indeed want 
your own scenes to be there.


Now, with POV-Ray's "scenes" folder indeed placed inside the user data 
subtree, I think it is really worth to consider renaming that folder.

Or, as a matter of fact, this now *being* user data, it should actually 
be assumed that any files in there *are* user data and *must not* be 
deleted when uninstalling, re-installing or updating POV-Ray.

(I actually think that the sample scene files and default include files 
should instead be placed in the "Program Files"; of course this opens up 
the problem that the sample scenes can no longer be rendered to the 
directory they're in, but the proper solution would not be to work 
around by placing the sample scenes where they don't belong, but to 
redesign the input/output directory concept.)


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