I have a question that's not so much about Compose...

# compose-desktop

[Tim McCormack]

I have a question that's not so much about Compose as about desktop applications... how do you know where to store files for the user? Is there any standard for that, or does everyone just have to reinvent that particular wheel for their own application?

[Adam Brown]

since you have the JVM, you can query for the user's home directory as such:
System.getProperty("user.home")

[SaurabhS]

https://kotlinlang.slack.com/archives/C0BJ0GTE2/p1680369504150709

[mikehearn]

It depends on what type of files they are (preferences, user generated data, volatile caches etc).

[Tim McCormack]

I was mostly thinking of user-generated data—journal entries, in this case—but really any of it. (Except for window settings, which I think are managed by the desktop environment or the GUI toolkit.)

[Tim McCormack]

That library looks great!

[mikehearn]

In that case if you don't have an explicit save process, just create a directory in the user's $HOME or %USERHOME% directory and let them change the path if they want to. Don't stick user generated data in hidden locations as otherwise it might not get backed up, and some users will want to move those files to a cloud drive.

[Tim McCormack]

What I'm struggling with is that I don't want my user's first experience of the application to be "here, make an annoying and arbitrary decision about file storage". But obviously I do want to empower them to make usable backups, etc.

[Tim McCormack]

Currently I ask them to pick a location, but I prefill the dialog box with something that looks plausible. Maybe I could suggest multiple? ~/thing, ~/documents/thing, ~/.local/[...]/thing, pick-your-own.

[Tim McCormack]

(and then I have to store a pointer to the chosen location in .local or whatever)

[Tim McCormack]

I feel like most applications don't ask this question at all.