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> The problem is that so many apps just straight up ignore all those guidelines. The fact it happens so often suggests that the documentation isn't good enough
by joshvm 8y ago
> The problem is that so many apps just straight up ignore all those guidelines.
The fact it happens so often suggests that the documentation isn't good enough.
> Of course.
At least Apple's pages is pretty clear and has some nice diagrams.
I think this page is more appropriate: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/csidl https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/csidl
It's reasonably well documented for UWP, though I can't find an equivalent for Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/app-settings/store-and-retrieve-app-data https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/app-sett...
Hence why I suggested that Qt has the right approach. It also has http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstandardpaths.html http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstandardpaths.html which abstracts out standard paths for cross-platform applications.
- int_19h 8y ago> The fact it happens so often suggests that the documentation isn't good enough. Any library or framework author knows that documentation is never enough. ~ On Windows, though, there's also historical reasons - back in Win9x days, there was no practical reason for apps to bother if they didn't anticipate running on NT, which is why it was so common to just dump configs next to the .exe (and even to this day, Windows uses FS virtualization to make this work for old apps). When 2K and especially XP became popular, and everyone was rapidly porting their stuff, people often didn't bother looking up docs and all, and just used the "least significant change" approach to fixing things. And that kind of set the background for later - why bother being nice, if nobody else does? > I think this page is more appropriate: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/csidl https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/csidl This page describes pre-Vista, deprecated APIs. Unless you need to target XP, a desktop app should use the known folder mechanism.
- joshvm 8y ago> This page describes pre-Vista, deprecated APIs. Unless you need to target XP, a desktop app should use the known folder mechanism. Actually the current documentation refers you to the CSIDL list if you want to know what any of the GUIDs actually mean. The new docs just provide a list of IDs with minimal information. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/knownfolderid https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/known...