Digital Workshop

I want to set up the initial page of a Pub as a landing page for user logon. There I would have the User select which data files he is working with... e.g. on C: drive or on a USB drive.

I would have the user install the Pub on a work PC and a home PC, and have certain Read/Write files on a Flash drive. That way he has some portability. (I'm guessing 'synching' would be too challenging? So just work off of the one set).

How would I set this up?
I am thinking to check drives and paths to "find" where that "working folder" is. But Drive Letters change. And Opus has a test for file exists, but not for folder exists?

Also, is there a way to get at "Last Modified" properties of folder... just in case two or more folders of same name exist?

If you know the folder and file name, but not the drive, you could try a brute force check and run through the alphabet to see which returns a positive?? not very elegant, but it might do the job?Or what about getting the user to browse for the file? then putting the path into a variable.

Sandy

Thanks Sandy.

I'd want to make it ~foolproof and certainly transparent or simple for the user. I think letting the User identify it would be okay, if I could present a shortlist of valid drives.

I have not tried bruteforce cycle thru the alphabet. That may not be so bad (as long as the user does not make a copy to another drive... becomes a decoy).

Deeper/techie:
I found this on MSDN site.
http://tinyurl.com/5pcjy2
One thread suggests get WMI Object Win32_LogicalDisk using PowerShell. (pic), but I have no idea how that could be used from Opus.

Cheers.

Running through the letters of the alphabet would be relatively easy to do in script. It could be done in a loop to run through the possible drive letters.
You could then detect multiple copies on different drives.


Another couple of options is to search for a DLL to give the information, or it will be saved in the registry somewhere? however, that will probably only give you the valid drive letters, you would then still have to check them to see if a valid file exists, so doing the check on all drive letters may be just as easy???

Sandy

Sandy,

Thanks.

I did not read that close enough. Or I just had my 'head' stuck on drives and paths.

To-date I have not used that file-browse feature of Opus at runtime. Once I read another separate question ( viewtopic.php?t=3157 ), it clicked for me.

I think that's an acceptable approach. Now I'll have to figure out the logic of when to ask the user and what choices to give him. Pretty simple after all.

I came across a few utilities and in a couple cases... solutions to other problems and hurdles.

The resources/links do NOT exactly solve what I was trying to accomplish (an Opus exe installed on 2 machines and 'portable files' for user data/writes). But are worthy of noting here in case others find a use for them or a way to solve Opus portability.

One thing I've noticed about Vista (vs. WinXP or prior) is that Vista does not automatically 'adapt' to new Paths when drive letters are changed (manually)?

Quotes below are not from Opus forum:
above from
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

above from
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/ ... indows-xp/


above from
http://portableapps.com/
( a concern here may be control/redistribution... seems like most Apps are not controlled licenses )