On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Doug Franklin <[email protected]> wrote: >> It's not sensible to divide up the OS and some application installs, >> like Photoshop, which install bits in various locations throughout the >> OS libraries for color management, etc. > > It /is/ sensible as long as developers like Adobe and Microsoft, to name > just two egregious offenders, don't write their software so it requires that > the installer spray myriad bits and bobs, often of dubious usefulness, > across every bloody directory on my computer.
I don't use anything from Microsoft. In order to interact with the system wide color management system and printers in Mac OS X, however, Adobe has to put profiles and alias links to profiles where the OS can get to them. The rest of what it installs is all put in well known places where third-party stuff goes. There are other bits that need to be managed, like kernel and drive modules, that must be placed in the right OS path for other things to work. When I was working with the development tools folks at Apple, we worked on making the tools as flexible as possible regards where to install them in the system ... it took five years work to make the UI apps relocatable to just about anywhere, but the compilers and debuggers are still locked into a very very specific set of directories littered throughout the OS. To change that means thousands of programmer-hours spent very expensively to no particular benefit to anyone. -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
