Re: [AD] 5.0.0 final release plan

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2 Jan 2011, at 19:59 , Matthew Leverton wrote:
> I haven't really read all of this thoroughly, so apologies if I'm
> repeating something. But why not just have something like:
> 
> ALLEGRO_PROGRAM_DATA_PATH
> 
> If executed from a bundle, it points to the Resource folder (if it
> exists). If not in a bundle, it's the same as ALLEGRO_PROGRAM_PATH.

That could work.

> Because to me, it seems like ALLEGRO_SYSTEM_DATA_PATH is something
> like c:\users\all users\appdata\game\, which makes no sense in terms
> of locating data that is bundled with a program. And
> ALLEGRO_USER_DATA_PATH is something like
> c:\users\matthew\appdata\game\, which again, makes no sense.
> 
> To me, both of those (SYSTEM_DATA and USER_DATA) are meant for saving
> content generated by the program. For example, if I want to save a
> high score, I might save it into SYSTEM_DATA (if shared among all
> users) or USER_DATA (if just for that user). But I would never use
> those locations to find data that is bundled with the program.

I don't think that agrees with the documented rationale behind the different paths, which says that the SYSTEM_DATA is, in fact, the location where you would load the global game data. The location where you would store things like highscores or configuration settings is in the various SETTINGS_PATHs.
Now, we can argue over whether the names make intuitive sense and whether there would be a better one, but in the end there's always going to be personal preference and biases involved.

What would be good is if the documentation was a bit more clear about what the various paths would represent on the different platforms. I don't think this is entirely obvious. I thought this came up earlier and this information had been added, but from looking at the online docs, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Evert