A question for the hardcore JauntePE users

Discuss anything related to JauntePE, the utlimate utility to help you tame non-portable applications. Share your experience about the apps that work with JauntePE, and the apps that don't.
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redllar
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A question for the hardcore JauntePE users

#1 Post by redllar »

A question for the hardcore users, i.e., those of you that understand how JPE's redirection mechanism works.

As you might remember, I modified JPE a while back concerning the use of the %userprofile% special folder #40 within the file system redirection sections. The mod put in place was to ignore blanket %userprofile% redirection requests. You were forced instead to use a new %40% token, along with an appended path, to get the redirection request to be used. My aim was to prevent some possible troubling scenarios from occuring due to the shortcomings in how JPE handles file system browsing requests.

Well, 030 has a new WFSMerge setting that causes JPE to present a given directory's contents to an app after first merging the real file system's directory's contents with that of its counterpart portable file system's directory's contents, if any. What this means, in terms of the %userprofile% redirection use, is that the "troubling scenarios" go away.

So, after all that, assuming the above makes sense, my question to you all is - when WFSMerge is turned on, should JPE allow the use of the %userprofile% special folder #40 on its own, without the need for the %40% token with an appended path? If it is allowed, then a number of apps (mostly open source apps written to work on both linux and windows) that currently require special handling, no longer require that special handling. Any file system mods within %userprofile% would be redirected as expected.

The downside to allowing this is that most people won't realize what could go wrong for those few apps if WFSMerge was turned off. So an app that was previously working fine would suddenly stop redirecting file system changes as expected. I could add a popup to the gui when the setting was turned off, but as can be seen from the above hot air, it's a bit wordy explaining what the problem would be and what they would need to do to ensure that turning it off wouldn't be a problem.

So, any thoughts? I can't decide myself. It'll all be documented in the help, so I don't think it'll be an issue for those that go beyond being a casual JPE user. I guess I'm wondering about those that don't really know, or want to know, how JPE works, and also don't want to read the docs. In other words, probably the majority of the people. What's the best way to handle this sort of thing with those type of people in mind?

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Andrew Lee
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#2 Post by Andrew Lee »

If my assumption is correct, WFSMerge will be "on" by default in 030, right?

In the default case, treating %userprofile% without special %40% token makes sense to the majority of users who just accept default settings.

If WFSMerge is turned "off", then it should imply user knows what he is doing, so enabling "%040" handling shouldn't be a problem, IMHO.

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Kranor
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#3 Post by Kranor »

I was trying to find some eloquent way of saying what Andrew said. So to keep it simple.........



I agree with him!!!


Lol

redllar
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#4 Post by redllar »

Thanks for reminding me of the "newbie equals defaults" axiom. I'm a bit thickheaded these days.
If my assumption is correct, WFSMerge will be "on" by default in 030, right?
Of course the answer to that question is "yes and no." :) And to me, your reasoning makes sense except - I did not give you all of the necessary info.

I forgot to mention that WFSMerge tweaking is currently a "personal preferences" setting that is easily accessible to anyone. Personal preferences are end user settings like displaying the titlebar JPE icon, border coloring, having a portable desktop, having a certain fake drive setup, recycle bin bypassing, etc. Things you would want to set for all JPEized apps and that would potentially override or be added to the chosen builder config automatically during the build portable process. So it's not just a setting that a knowledge user would have access to.

The problem scenario I see occuring is for an end user to turn off file system merging as a personal preference, while using a generic config with an app that stores its data directly into %userprofile% instead of %appdata%. Would it be okay in this case to have JPE ignore the file system merging personal preference? Using app-specific configs should be okay since the config creator should have already ferreted out the necessary file system redirections. Is just warning the end user of the consequences when WFSMerge is turned off enough or should I spend some time to try and find a way to fix JPE? Assuming my head doesn't explode first.

Oh, and Kranor, thanks for "having my back" in that other thread. I never know how to respond to those guys. I'm trying very hard again to just ignore everything except getting JPE 030 done.

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Kranor
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#5 Post by Kranor »

:wink: No problem redllar :lol:

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