GnuCash 2.2.0 under Windows (problems)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Andreas

>
>Maybe
>
>2') the installer detects an invalid character in the path to the home
>directory, tells the user and asks him to enter an alternate path.  That
>is used for gconf and maybe other stuff as well.  This sounds pretty
>vague, because I will have to check what is possible first.
>  
>
UH --- This is not an install time problem. Perhaps I needed to make 
that clearer?

On any XP system being used properly, the "person" doing the install 
will be an administrator. The user data area of the administrator will 
be c\documents and settings\administrator'sID\

The data area of the user (may be the same human) will be c:\documents 
and settings\userID\

The problem occurs when the USER first runs GnuCash (presumably GnuCash 
recognizes that it has never run before for this user and creates the 
configuration directories

This user is not allowed (has no permission to) create any data path 
outside his/her own data directory (cannot utilize the data area of any 
other user on the system, not even "read" unless that area was defined 
as "shared"). XP may not allow simultaneous multiple users (the way a 
'nix would) but it is able to handle sequential multiple users properly 
each with their own data areas. So.......
1) If the problem with the "&" is "anywhere in the path" the user CAN'T 
create such a directory (if "&" is in the user's ID)
2) If the problem is just in the immediate directory so that the user 
could fix that by creating a directory c:\documents and 
setting\userID\GnuCashconfig\ and telling GnuCash to configure there (if 
that would have solved the problem)
    a) Now a sub problem -- how to store the alternate path location
    b) More important -- why didn't GnuCash do this in the first place 
as now no subproblem "a".
That would be more in line with the way every other "open source for 
Windows" app that I have used so far works. They don't try to drop their 
configuration data scattered (ungrouped) into the top level of the 
user's data directory. Instead they:
    1) When coming up, check for the existence of a specific 
SUBdirectory in the user's data directory and if found, use that path 
for configuraton data
    2) If not found, then it's first time up for this user, create that 
subdirectory, format the initial versions of the configuration stuff, 
and proceed.

That's why I was asking whether the ampersand was a problem "anywhere in 
the path" or just  "in this directory"  (the name of the directory where 
the GnuCash initial config routines are placing the .gconf directory).

>  
>
>>Did that mean "in the name of the directory in which the directory 
>>.gconf will be placed" or "in the name of any directory in the path to 
>>the directory in which .gconf will be placed"?
>>    
>>
>
>It seems to be the latter.
>  
>
Which if true, would be unfortunate. For example, had MS chosen to use 
"Douments & Settings" instead of "Documents and Settings"

>maybe this can be combined with 2'), maybe not.
>  
>
As already noted, a Windows XP ordinary user can't do that (create a 
directory outside that user's data path). I am puzzled by this being 
confusing because this is not an XP specific feature. An ordinary user 
under a 'nix OS can't create a directory outside the path /home/userID/ 
and the only reason this problem hasn't shown up before is that a 'nix 
user ID isn't going to have an ampersand in it.

>Note that actually the data is distributed in application-specific
>directories.  A windows user just would not expect that granularity.
>  
>
That's true only for Windows users (sadly the overwhelming majority) 
that don't do data backup. Look at the realities here. The application 
data (of the apps this user is using) changes rapidly -- get emails 
every day for example. Other data might be more massive and slower to 
change and the user might want a different backup scheme for it. If, for 
example I were using T'Bird and F'Fox and of course I have word 
processing files, open calc spreadsheets, etc. in My Documents AND I 
have a directory containing photographs which might be many gigs in size 
I do NOT want my daily or weekly or monthly (whatever my backup 
frequency) to be copying ALL of c:\documents and settings\userID\ but 
just c:\documents and settings\userID\.thunderbird\ and .\moxilla\ and 
\my documents\  (copy and burn just those three directories to CD each 
month) -- and I would LIKE if now that I use GnuCash to simply be able 
to add ONE additional directory to that list rather than five 
directories plus one file. I would be making a separate backup of just 
the photos added each time (we don't have photos since no digital camera 
-- but most folks do these days). Impractical to back up ALL the photos 
each month or whatever as would take many DVDs (and a LOT of time)

There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.