Thank you for the hint, now I understand... I am too late for respones ;-).
... anyway I thought Pd is gentleware: respectful to environments, not wolvesware which tend to leave their marks everywhere where they can ... but maybe it's only us old hacker generation, the younger generation got used to it.
I'm not going to rehash the whole thing but I tried to find a compromise for both, even if it's not perfect.
There is a key in the GUI settings for the Documents path which can be set to "DISABLED" to avoid triggering the initial dialog. This is what is set when you select No.
ok, so I can do on remote command: $ mkdir -p ~/.config/Pd/org.puredata.pd.pd-gui $ echo DISABLED > .config/Pd/org.puredata.pd.pd-gui/docspath.conf
I don't know the details of the Linux conf handling, but that looks correct.
For macOS, this would be the equivalent:
$ defaults write org.puredata.pd.pd-gui docspath "DISABLED"
Also, the documents directory handling is implemented as a plugin, so it could be deleted or renamed to avoid it entirely.
I will take a look in this, but better dont touch the pd distributions packages..
Maybe we need to add a plugin override in general (-noplugin "docsdir") or a docspath override specifically, ala -nodocsdir? I tried to make sure if doesn't ask if the home directory is not available or not writable (ala readonly setups), but maybe there can be another hacker-friendly check? Logic is in the plugin init proc:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_pure-2Ddata_... <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_pure-2Ddata_... >
My original thinking was that if you didn't want the docspath handling, you'd just press No once and never see it again, however if you are working with more than a couple normal desktop installs, this can of course not be the case.
(other stuff deleted from thread)...
Here's a modest idea for an improvement - perhaps when Pd is started from itself, not from the GUI, it should regard a missing docspath as meaning not to ask, but when it's started form the TCL/TK layer we'd stick with the current behavior.
cheers Miller