Hi Eliot,

This sounds awesome!

I would greatly welcome it if you and/or Virtend could contribute or
license this suitably to be included in Squeak/the VM.

Kind regards,
Jakob

Am Mo., 3. Jan. 2022 um 18:14 Uhr schrieb Eliot Miranda
<eliot.miranda at gmail.com>:
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> On Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 8:42 AM David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jakob,
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 08:39:29PM +0100, Jakob Reschke wrote:
>> > Hi Dave,
>> >
>> > Happy new year!
>> >
>> > Am Sa., 1. Jan. 2022 um 21:46 Uhr schrieb David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com>:
>> > >
>> > > For Unix/Linux, the solution can be very simple, just add /usr/share/squeak/
>> > > and /usr/local/share/squeak/ to the list of locations to be searched
>> > > for sources files.
>> > >
>> > > I suspect (but I'm not sure) that some similar convention will work
>> > > for Windows.
>> > >
>> >
>> > On Windows you would need additional help from the VM because there is
>> > no fixed path like /usr/share or /usr/local/share. Most Windows
>> > installations are on drive C:, but it is possible to spread Windows
>> > across different partitions. Possible candidates for a non-writable
>> > system-wide location are %ProgramFiles%\Common Files (usually
>> > C:\Program Files\Common Files) or, if Squeak were installed like other
>> > applications, its program directory under %ProgramFiles% (for example
>> > C:\Program Files\Squeak). If it should be writable by users (or at
>> > least the one who creates it), we could take %ProgramData% (usually
>> > C:\ProgramData).
>> >
>> > https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/knownfolderid
>> >
>>
>> Thanks, this link makes it much more clear. Indeed, this would be
>> better be supported by the VM, which has direct access to the Windows
>> API calls.
>>
>> > The most official way to get the folder paths at runtime is to use the
>> > Windows API, but going via the environment variables should work as
>> > well. So if the VM does not provide the paths, we would still need at
>> > least access to environment variables from a VM without separately
>> > installed plugins.
>> >
>>
>> Given that the KNOWNFOLDERID locations are well defined in the API,
>> I would think that the Windows API would be the better way to handle
>> it. Perhaps the VM should provide an optional primitive for this,
>> with the primitive providing a list of one or more locations in
>> which the sources files might be found. And if the primitive is
>> not implemented, then don't look there :-)
>
>
> We have a plugin in the Virtend VM that gives official values for several named directories.  I'm happy to move this plugin and/or the primitive into VMMaker.  The specification is
>
>       Primitive. Query for a common file location.
>         Arguments:
>                 location: String describing the common file location.
>         Return value: The path to the designated location.
>         Known locations:
>                 'home' - the user's home directory
>                 'desktop' - the user's desktop directory
>
>                 'temp' - the temp directory to use
>                 'preferences' - the place to store (per user) app preferences
>                 'applications' - the directory for installing applications
>                 'fonts' - the directory to install fonts in the system
>
>                 'documents' - the users documents folder
>                 'music' - the users default location for music
>                 'pictures' - the users default location for pictures
>                 'videos' - the users default location for videos
>
>
> _,,,^..^,,,_
> best, Eliot
>