Storing and saving a setting in a stand alone

Kay C Lan lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com
Sat Jan 17 21:05:58 EST 2015


On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 3:43 AM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
wrote:

I can imagine a scenario where somebody uses an app both at work and at
> home and for
> security reasons carries the app around in their pocket on a USB
> flash-drive or an SD card
> and wants the data to ride with it.
>

Not sure that makes sense. That's like carrying your credit card with the
PIN number scrawled on a piece of paper in your wallet. For real security
you would only carry the encrypted data on the USB stick in a file format
that would give no clue as to the application needed to access it. Even it
the data isn't sensitive, If the app is required both at home and at work
then leave the app at home and work and just carry the data. Thus an
excellent reason for separating data from the UI.  If for some reason I
can't think of, you are bound by some restriction that the app can't be
stored on computers at home or work and must be run off the USB stick, then
there isn't anything preventing you from saving the data separate from the
UI.

Considering that a very basic vanilla LC 7.x standalone is now so large
that it could easily be several 1000 times larger than the User Data, it
seems less efficient to me to constantly be copying the App to and fro when
you could just do the Data.

Considering the trend towards cross device applications that remember the
page you were reading, the bookmark you were looking at, the paragraph you
were amending, and automatically takes it from one device to another; the
copy to USB stick to take home is IMO like CDs and DVDs, outdated and not
how users today would expect Apps to work across devices.

PS
Scott thanks for the excellent explanation. Thankfully you are right, any
data saving method you start with can be modified. I crossed that bridge a
long time ago. My comments are in consideration to making it easier for new
users wanting to build mobile apps with LC. Lets hope that the new
documentation will incorporate some sort of table of options available and
an explanation as good as yours as to some of the reasons why a Splash
Stack might be the solution to a particular problem.



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