It seems on modern Windows the WinBoard policy for placing its files is in need of some revision:
When a saveGameFile is specified by the user in the Save Options dialog, and the user does not specify an absolute path, this filename is interpreted relative to the installation folder of WinBoard. For a plain filename, this would mean it is placed in the same folder as WB. It is clear that something like this has to be done, as the Windows idea of 'current directory' seems a bit fuzzy: The Tournament Options dialog now also specifies a file to be written, and I had not done any re-interpretation there, and it turns out the file is now made in the last folder that was active before you create the file. Which could be anywhere. On modern Windows systems, the WinBoard folder is a very poor choice for user files, though. If people install in C:\Program Files\..., Windows Vista does not even allow them to create the files, and saving games in a match will be refused without any error message, so that you simply lose the games. For this reason I switched to installing by default in C:\WinBoard... But a more fundamental solution would be to not try to put user data files in the same folder as the executables. For the settings file this was already solved by redirecting it with a -settingsFile option to the user's private Application Data folder. I think we would have to do something similar for other user files too (saveGameFile, savePositionFile, tourneyFile). For 'load files' it is less clear; people could want to load files that came with the install (e.g. Nunn positions, or the default opening book), or they could provide their own set of start positions or opening books. Ideally they should be able to browse to the files they want to load, and the browser would supply the choice to quickly switch between their user chess directory, and the instllation folder. I am just not sure what would be the best choice for the folder to make the user files. Should it be C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents or C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents\WinBoard or C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents\Chess Perhaps I should make a command-line option to set the path of the directory relative to which non-absolute filenames are interpreted. Like -defaultSaveDirectory. This would then as default value have the WinBoard install folder (to reproduce old behavior), but we could configure it in the master settings file that comes with the install to some user-dependent place. That of course just defers the question of how to configure it in the default install. Would it be good to put the winboard.ini file in that same folder? I am not very happy with the current location of the user's Application Data, as this seems to be a hidden folder on most modern Window systems, and people cannot find it anymore. Feedback from Windows gurus on this would be highly appreciated!
