Razorsoup,
The following is from the e-Sword website:

"e-Sword version 7.9 changes from 7.8
User files are now stored under the Windows user's "Personal Folder" directory on 2000, XP, and Vista. Due to Windows permissions issues this change was necessary. This also makes backing-up user files easier as these files are isolated to this directory."

Being a Windows permission issue, Rick's solution of using My Documents is a natural one. To make this destination user configurable would increase both the programming code and the support requests.

The automatically saved user files, study.notx (Study Notes), topic.topx (Topic Notes), markup.ovlx (Highlighting and Marking), are among the best features of e-Sword.

God Bless!
Eric

I understand the need to move the files due to Windows permissions issues, especially with the changes made in Vista

Actually a more natural solution would have been to use the "Application Data" folder (AppData on Vista). That's what it's there for.

In my opinion, it is an irresponsible practice to dump files into a users "Personal Folder" without giving the user the option of where to dump those files. Also, the option already does exist, even if it does require a registry edit. As I said originally, I was able to move all but one file. The program doesn't seem to respect that one setting though and recreates an empty file and changes the registry value. All I'd like to see is for the program to not reset that setting and use the value that is assigned to it.

--Michael

Razorsoup,
I disagree with you on two points.

Application Data is designed to be written to and manipulated by applications. User data in e-Sword, due to its manipulation by users, is better stored in a folder designed to be written to and manipulated by the average computer user.

In order to bless the Body of Christ with free Bible study software, Rick Myers has written his program to be compatible across platforms, and with foriegn language support. Increasing the user configurability of any software always increases the requests for support on how to use said user configurations. Because this labor of love is Rick's ministry, he has elected to create software that is easy to use, and easy to support. I do not consider this irresponsible. Perhaps Rick Myers is listening while God is at work in his heart to will and to do of His good pleasure.

God Bless!
Eric

Applications like e-Sword? The "My Documents" folder is where I store pictures I took, music I bought, videos I created, documents I wrote. All of these are things I specifically created and placed there. The files created by e-Sword in "My Documents" are not really user data in that I did not create them. The program created them without my input. Standard practice would be to store these types of files in the "Application Data" folder. Another option would be to ask during the install process where to save these files and store that location in the registry (as it already is). Final option would be to store them in the "My Documents" folder but offer the option to move them somewhere else.

Storing the e-Sword data in "Application Data" doesn't really change this at all. Just store the data at %APPDATA%\e-Sword. %APPDATA% is an environment variable that points to the application data folder for the logged in user on Windows. Works regardless of Windows version.

Increasing the user's ability to configure the software would not necessarily make the software any less easy to use. It could if done wrongly, but it doesn't have to.

Besides, the ability is already there. The program just needs to respect it's own settings. Right now, it just blindly overwrites the settings it created. If it's not going to actually use those settings, it shouldn't bother creating them in the first place.

As it is, I'll probably just move on to another program. e-Sword has some great features but in it's current state, it will only annoy and frustrate me everytime I use it and that's not something I want to associate with Bible study.

--Michael

a) The "Application Data' folder is for data created by the application. It is not for user created content. (More to the point, users shouldn't have to open those folders. );
b) Rick codes e-Sword so that it will run on Win95, and every version of Windos released since then. He also tries to make it "easy" to run under Windows Emulators;

Given a choice of putting the folder in a standard place, or allowing users  to  put the folder just anywhere, Rick opted for the choice that would provide for the least number of support questions.
 

There are a number of registry settings that can be made to customize e-Sword.  You've just stumbled into some of them.  Most of them have not been publicly documented. For the majority of users, playing with registry settings is a very bad idea.

AFAIK, that registry setting is _not_ used by e-Sword  for that specific module, but for a different purpose.
 
jonathon

Ditto. Too many are using the Documents folder and it is getting a little disorganized. I am actually still using the Documents folder, but would like to nest it one more level down. I am running Win 7 and have tried changing the registry with 9.0.x and 9.5.x but to no avail. FWIW....

razorsoup
Is this your fist time using Esword
 

I would like to +1 the request to make the location for e-Sword user data configurable. For example, I like to have "My Documents" organized ... I have many subfolders of information organized by type of data, and it would be nice to have the ability (either through a registry change or application config) to determine where it goes.

I've installed many apps that create their own folder directly under "My Documents" but many of them allow you to move their folder to other locations, say to "My Documents\Bible Study\e-Sword" etc.

And my thanks to Rick for his many years of development of e-Sword. Personally, I think the current version (9.5.1 as of this writing) is the best version yet!