> It think the last alternative would be what is customary provided the > user specific config file is in a standard location. If the user wants to > put the config file in an exotic location then it would be ok I think to > leave it up to him to ensure that this is possible.
By this you mean we should create ~/.config and ~/.config/xboard if they are not there, to write ~/.config/xboard/xboard.conf? Perhaps using ~/.xboardrc is not such a bad idea after all... I have a Linux question anyway: I am now at a stage where redefining the main settings file (where the save will take place) from within another one (rather than from the command line). This required a subtle change in behavior, because old behavior was that an expanded path name was written back to the settingsFileName after parsing was complete, thus overwriting anything that had changed during parsing. I now write back the expanded path name before parsing, but after the file has been successfully opened. This works to redirect the save file to ./xboard.ini, but NOT to ~/xboard.ini. Apparently the ~ is not a valid OS filename, but interpreted by the shell? I tried using the function ExpandPathName onto the settings file name, but that does not seem so help either. It keeps complaining that it could not write "~/xboard.ini". How should this be handled?
