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[bugs:#1288] Change standard paths more MAC OS

Status: open
Group: v0.47
Created: Tue Mar 28, 2017 01:51 AM UTC by Alexandre Porres
Last Updated: Tue Mar 28, 2017 01:51 AM UTC
Owner: nobody

Howdy, I'm quoting a list discussion that led to a standard path change in Linux for the latest release.

and I quote
"so the main problem is on linux, where "pd-externals" show up in my
home directory, a place that everybody finds themselves looking at all
the time.

so i'm all for moving to ~/.local/lib/pd/extra/
(and/or ~/.local/lib/pd/0.47-3/extra/ if somebody thinks this is useful)

the relevant specs can be found at [1]

gfdmasr
IOhannes

PS: i don't think that ~/.config/ is the right place to put externals
to, regardless of what blender does (again, see [1])

[1]
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html"

source: https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2016-05/114747.html

What I'm hoping to discuss now is the change of folders for the Mac OS system.

The current user folder (~/Library/Pd) is hidden, since Lion (OS 10.7) was released in 2011. This makes it really hard managing externals there. For example, if you want to add it to the preference=>Path, you can't navigate it there, unless you know it is a hidden folder and how to make it visible to you. Another option is to make aliases.

As someone who's teaching Pd workshops, I can tell you that's always hard and confusing to students.

Then I realized how uncommon it is for a software to install a folder in ~/Library like that... it is common to install files in ~/Library/Applicatiom Support, but those are kinds of files the user is never supposed to mess with himself. It is more common to install such files like addons/plugins in somewhere like ~/Documents, this is where Max/MSP uses, for instance, to install externals. As for shared files, it uses "Users/shared"

I can add other quotes from Pd fellas in the list, who shared with me this notion.

Mark says:
"+1 on this... i just had a classroom of students navigate to ~/Library and create
~/Library/Pd .... its quite a pain to teach some of these basic skills. (...)
BTW arduino and processing also both install libraries in: ~/Documents"
source: https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2017-03/118277.html

Dan says:
"I agree that something in the ~/Documents would be more standard than anything in ~/Library as that has been a hidden folder in Finder since OS X 10.7 or so as is not meant to be directly user-accessible. The preferences file, OTOH, should stay as that uses the same format & location that most macOS apps use."
source: https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2017-03/118338.html

So, I hope I've made a good case that we'd benefit a lot if we'd also change this in the next release, in the same way it was just changed in linux for the current release.

thanks

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