I appreciate and respect the efforts made here to help one simple user. The Microsoft reference says it is valid up to Windows Vista, so it is an excellent example of how things continue changing.
I would define, as an amateur, of course, "typical" to mean "the way it is out of the box when you don't change it in the current version of Windows released at least a year ago". We deal with a community of users that does not customize Windows but uses it as it.
I fully expect that I will only encounter \AppData\Roaming but I know how to find the right answer if I need a better one. Thanks, again, for dedicated support and ideas.
--
Geoff Michaels, President
G. Michaels Consulting Ltd
Phone (866 or 780) 438-2101
On Mon, Oct 03, 2022 at 09:25:58AM -0600, Geoff Michaels wrote:
> Thanks. I had missed the distinction between $APPDATA$ and %APPDATA%. I
> will assume that I will find that %APPDATA% defaults to
> ...\APPDATA\ROAMING.
>
> If one is inspired to try to "idiot-proof" the documentation, one could
> insert the parenthetical expression "(typically \AppData\Roaming)" for
> those that use Windows out of the box and are directed to bonafide
> documentation that assumes a lot about the users.
Current Windows documentation says for CSIDL_APPDATA / FOLDERID_RoamingAppData
at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/csidl:
> The file system directory that serves as a common repository for
> application-specific data. A typical path is C:\Documents and
> Settings\username\Application Data.
I was never able to find out what "typical" exactly mean. Is it something
configurable, or that can change at any point without any notice? I personally
don't think that trying to put some example value that may not be accurate for
the user is going to help, especially if that's not true on all currently
supported versions of Windows (and I don't know if that's the case, and even if
it's right now we will most certainly forget to update it the next time it
changes). Relying on dynamic variable resolution really seems like the best
thing to do.