RE: [AD] Data file directory

["Vincent PENQUERC'H" <vpenquerch@xxxxxxxxxx>]

   Hi !

>that the API 
>function would essentially end up as a series of "return standard Unix 
>directory name" calls, which would all just be defined to the program 
>directory on other platforms: not perhaps a bad thing, but 
>kind of pointless 
>since it would just be another layer of code for people to 
>learn, and to use 
>this properly you would have to understand the difference 
>between readonly 
>data, per-user configs, etc, and if you understood that you 
>might as well 
>just use getenv("HOME"), "/var", etc, directly. It seems like 
>a Unix person 
>would not need these functions to be in Allegro at all, while 
>a non Unix 
>person wouldn't understand what they were or how/why to use them...

But what if one want to have a multi platform game without poking
too many ifdef's around ? My game runs in DOS+Linux, and I hope it
will on BeOS too, and what's cool with Allegro is that it hides
what is different on the platforms it supports. So, while I agree
that most data would be specific to a user, having such routines
would help virtualize the environment you compile to.
The only problem should be knowing where to put what, and not where
to put what on that particular OS and that one and that one too.

>What do other people think about this? Would you have a use for such 
>routines if they were included?

I don't know if and how I would, but the idea seems interesting just
because it goes in the direction of making a standard way of doing
things on different OSes. And how does BeOS likes to put those kind
of files ? Unixy like probably, but the filesystem tree structure
underwent some changes, no ?

Anyway, hope I made sense there.

Just my 2 cents....

--vp