Orchid XP v8 schrieb:

> Heh. On Monday, I've got to see if a Windows 2.0 program works OK under 
> Windows XP. The fun part? To run it, you must replace SERIAL.SYS with a 
> custom modified version. (!!)

Uh - Windows TWO-point-zero?? Sure it isn't 3.1 at least? Who on earth 
used 2.0?

> It still amuses me that this program can't print on any network printer 
> who's name is more than 8 characters long...

Comes as not much of a surprise. It's rather a miracle that it can 
access networked printers at all...

> Oh, sure, it could put the installer file in
> 
>   %profile%\Local Settings\Temp
> 
> But it doesn't. It puts it in
> 
>   %profile%\Application Settings\Adobe\Acrobat\Updater
> 
> The Java installer does something similarly retarded for some reason. 
> Maybe it's an IE quirk of some kind?

I'd presume it's a safety measure to not end up with a crippled 
installation: Files in %profile%\Local Settings\Temp can be recycled by 
Windows' disk cleanup assistant. If the updater is designed using a 
multi-step approach, and there's a serious possibility that the steps 
may be run at very distinct points in time, you'll want those files to 
still exist when the second step commences.

If the updater cleans up after work, there shouldn' be a problem. If it 
fails to do, it somehow defies the exact purpose of the disk cleanup 
assistant, and would therefore need to be called poor design.

> You can't put, for example, the Word "normal" template in the registry. 
> But then, I guess it depends on what you consider to be "settings" and 
> what is "documents"...

Indeed, a clear line cannot always be drawn; for instance, are POV-Ray 
.ini files settings for POV-Ray, or are they part of the scene?

> FWIW, I think the registry actually works quite well for what it's 
> supposed to be for. You can lock it down with security, it's got 
> seperate user and system sections, and so on. The only real flaw is that 
> it's more or less impossible to do manual things like copy one user's 
> preferences to another user account, but only for one specific 
> application. (Because you will never, ever determine which keys to copy...)

Most software is pretty sane about this, storing /user/-specific 
settings in HKCU/Software/CompanyName/ProgramName, so the biggest 
obstacle is figuring the users' IDs.

Plus the fact that some software may not be using the registry to store 
settings, but files in one of the many %profile% subfolders instead.

Post a reply to this message