Re: [Plib-devel] Mac Updates/Patches (Tux too!)

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Darrell Walisser wrote:
> 
> For relative paths, I am pretty sure folders end in ':' and files do not.
> 
> For PLIB, I think we will make all our paths relative. Therefore *all* paths
> will have ':' at the beginning. Since we are not opening directories,
> I don't think we have to worry about trailing ':'
> 
> so UNIX ->  "foo.bar" -> MAC ":foo.bar"
> 
> or "../foo.bar" -> "::foo.bar"
> 
> UNIX -> /usr/local/share -> MAC ":usr:local:share"
> 
> Hopefully that last one doesn't come up too often ;-) We just have to remind
> developers to always use relative pathnames (even on UNIX/WINDOWS) and we
> should have no problems.

Iguess that makes sense because:

1) It avoids the drive name issue under Windoze ('C:', etc)

2) It's unlikely that an absolute path under one OS would even exist
   under another.

> This reminds me, when needing full paths, like for home directory or
> whatnot, I think the usual is to call  getenv ("HOME"). But MacOS has no
> concept of $HOME. In fact, the CodeWarrior C Library function getenv() on
> MacOS always returns NULL.
> 
> I think we should add getHome to our file class.
> The MacOS version can return the path to the preferences folder (global
> place where 99% of Mac apps store settings, hence why mine has 500 some-odd
> files in it ;-) ).

Yes - I think that's a good plan.
 
We'd also need a way to get a path from a 'shell variable' - or whatever
other preferences mechanism you have - that would let (for example) a game
find all it's data files.

Since the preference mechanisms vary - and the path name you get from
that mechanism will be in LOCAL form - not in the form that the
game writer was necessarily expecting - that will have to be handled
within the library.

-- 
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