The difference manifests itself when an organization is using roaming user profiles. Some settings for a user are appropriate for roaming from machine to machine, and some are not. The ones that should roam go in FOLDER_APPDATA and the ones that shouldn't go in FOLDER_LOCAL_APPDATA.
For example, you want your MapInfo custom symbols and theme templates to follow you from computer to computer, so they go in the roaming profile, which gets cached to "Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\etc." But your Web browser cache shouldn't be copied, so that should go in "Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\" Of course, which user settings are appropriate for roaming and which are not is something determined by the application, and it's up to the programmer to use the right folder for each setting. Everything you want to know about user profiles can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/xpusrdat.mspx Hope this helps Spencer -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Thoen Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 4:43 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MI-L] What's the difference between FOLDER_APPDATA andFOLDER_LOCAL_APPDATA? I'm looking at the MapBasic function GetFolderPath$() and notice that there are a couple of path designations that I'd like to know when I'd use one or the other. I'm working on a multi-user application so I want to store some user-specific parameters in the user's local folder. So I see that if I use FOLDER_APPDATA it points to a path like "Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\" and FOLDER_LOCAL_APPDATA points to a path like "Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\". Which one is the correct one to use? It seems that FOLDER_LOCAL_APPDATA is somewhat redundent. Why do they break out a "Local Settings" directory when you're already in the user's private settings path? Just curious why there's such a hair-splitting... - Bill Thoen _______________________________________________ MapInfo-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.directionsmag.com/mailman/listinfo/mapinfo-l _______________________________________________ MapInfo-L mailing list [email protected] http://www.directionsmag.com/mailman/listinfo/mapinfo-l
