is it safe to hardwire the "downloads" folder?

[Richard Gaskin]

Tiemo Hollmann wrote:

> I am looking for the best folder to download updates for my program on win
> and mac.

The good news is that the friendly constants LiveCode provides for 
access to special folders is only a subset of the most commonly-used 
ones.  Ken Ray took the time to document many others that can be used on 
both OS X and Windows:
<http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/livecode/tips/file010.htm>

The bad news is that I don't see the Downloads folder among them, nor 
could I turn it up in Apple's docs.

It may be that no constant for Downloads was defined for the Carbon API, 
so it wouldn't be accessible to us until that part of the LC engine is 
updated for Cocoa.

Or it may be that it's simply documented in a place I couldn't find. :)

If you can find it, use it.  If not, I'd probably opt for a different 
folder just to be save.

If this is a file you want the user to interact with, then you may want 
to risk hard-wiring "Downloads", or use the Desktop folder.

If it's only for your app to draw from to update itself, most 
self-updating apps use a temp folder, which may be a good idea here 
since tmp gets cleaned by the system between sessions in case anything 
goes wrong and your app doesn't have a chance to clean up after itself.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
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