Prior to build 1128 of 23 Oct 08, A-Shell looked for %miame%\default.ash unless a settings file was specified via the -o switch on the command line. In that case, if the specified filespec started with "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\ATE" directory, and the file was not present, it would have looked in %MIAME%, but the File>Save function would have saved it to the %USERPROFILE% directory.
Beginning with build 1128, the new scheme is that if no -o switch is specified, the search path is:
%APPDATA%\<appname>\<cfgname>.ash
%APPDATA%\<appname>\default.ash
%MIAME%\<cfgname>.ash
%MIAME%\default.ash
where <appname> is "ATE" or "A-Shell" depending on the context. For ATE, <cfgname> is the name of the connection profile; for A-Shell it is the name of the ini file, or "default" if the ini file is miame.ini.
If a -o file is specified, then it overrides the above rules, although if the file has no directory, the search path will be %APPDATA%\<appname> and then %MIAME%. This matches the prior search path when -o was used without a fully qualified path, except that %APPDATA% works better (and resolves differently) under Vista.
The File>Save and File>Save As menu items have been merged into a single File>Save... dialog, which allows you to save the current settings to one of the four locations/names above, and in addition contains a Save As button for more exotic options. It also contains a Delete button as a convenience for deleting a saved settings file (although it does not allow deleting the %miame%\default.ash file). And, it shows the filespec of the settings file that the current settings were loaded from.
The objectives of the above changes were:
| • | To better support Vista, which has a different location for which the %APPDATA% directory is not the same as %USERPROFILE%\Application Data directory; |
| • | To make it easier for dealers, site managers, and individual users to manage their personal window settings without having to manually adjust their shortcut command lines. |
The new scheme is as security-lax as the old one (allowing anyone to overwrite the shared %miame%\default.ash), but the save function does always default to one of the %APPDATA% options (hopefully eliminating some of the accidental overwrites). The next step will probably be to allow the shared copy to be password protected.
