Re: Installation on windows (fwd)

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

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On reflection, it sounds like we agree about everything apart from whether
to store system-specific or standardised paths internally (we may disagree
about what the API implies in this regard too ... but I think the principle
is the main issue).

We both seem to believe in much the same objectives, but disagree about how
to achieve them.

I'll try to clarify my reasoning in principle ...  I think we want to be
able to write portable code with minimal knowledge of filesystem
differences, and to me it makes sense to say to application developers -

Work to a single set of behaviors and use standard, simple mechanism for
converting paths to/from the standard on the infrequent occasions when it is
necessary to read in or write out local paths.

To you it makes sense to say - determine what system your app is running on,
and expect to use paths in the local format. Stick to the standard methods
for path manipulation and there will be few occasions where you need to
adjust your code to do things in a system specific way.

My background is very much one of distributed programming, where an
application will deal with input from many machines simultaneously.  From
that perspective, having different path representations on different
machines is horrible.  However, I do realise that it is an unusual
perspective, and the vast majority of programs don't have an isuse with
this.

While my feeling is that the two approaches are fairly evenly balanced
(leaving aside distributed systems, and the fact that we have one system
already working in the libraries, and consideration for the existing
application codebase), I'd like to hear what other people think about the
general prionciples.

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