More on apps, shelf space 1048

I do not mean "can they"; I know they can. I mean- is it typical for them to do this?

That's a similar system (though the folders were certainly different).

Of course, that Prefs folder appears first in System 7; older apps had other places to store prefs. They aren't going to clutter up a new Mac because you can't use those old programs anymore; Apple's compatibility is not that great.

How does the user choose? I'd expect the Clbuttic apps to store prefs in the Clbuttic preferences folder, for compatibility.

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This is remarkably rare on Windows; but then on Windows, it's very hard to damage the registry *structure*; with plists, it is perhaps easier to do this.

As long as the structure is intact, apps can ignore bogus values.

Of course, Apple may well have corrected this problem in Tiger, when they went to binary plist storage. This issue has never been that *separate preferences files* were fragile; it's text files that are easy to break.

I would not send a new user into the Library folder, either.

I find it seriously amazing that a *Mac* user would consider spelunking into the Library folder and manipulating files with computerese names to be *desirable*.

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Well, the plist editor is the easy way to do that kind of thing, though I do not think a basic user can be expected to do any of these things.

There are of course other ways to access the registry besides regedit, as well.

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No, not really. I have seen many Mac advocates insist that this is so, but it makes not the slightest bit of sense.

It is "more dangerous" to move files around in "My Documents" becasue the same program can also move files in "Windows-System32"?

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You can convert registry keys to text files too, if you like that, but the format is less verbose than XML.

However, this is not something you should *ever* need to do. Nor do I think that it really is something ordinary Mac users do.