Many applications use extended attributes (xattr) for similar purposes. The oldest way that still works is to use the resource fork of a file, which is sometimes implemented as an xattr. In these cases, for those file systems that support them, they are intrinsically part of the same file.
- Gary L. Wade (Sent from my iPhone)
On Aug 28, 2011, at 12:42 AM, Martin Hewitson <email@hidden> wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I've been scratching my head for a while on this. Suppose you have an NSDocument app like TextEdit which just allows the user to edit a text file. Now suppose there are some additional state settings associated with the editor. These could dictate how the contents of the text file are displayed, or how some other actions are to be carried out. My question is, where is the best place to store these additional state settings so that they persist across restarts of the app. I can think of 3 ways, and I don't really like any of them:
>
> 1) encode the settings as a string and tag it on the end of the text file then parse that string out when the file is reopened.
> 2) write an additional plist file next to the text file on disk, perhaps with the same name or as a hidden file.
> 3) write a plist file in the application support directory
>
> Thoughts:
>
> Method 1) sounds fragile and painful to implement and maintain
> Method 2) sounds intrusive - I don't like the idea of sprinkling files on the user's disk
> Method 3) would mean the support directory fills with plist files which may never be used again
>
> Anyone got any better ideas? Perhaps I'm missing something very obvious here.....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Martin
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Martin Hewitson
> Albert-Einstein-Institut
> Max-Planck-Institut fuer
> Gravitationsphysik und Universitaet Hannover
> Callinstr. 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany
> Tel: +49-511-762-17121, Fax: +49-511-762-5861
> E-Mail: email@hidden
> WWW: http://www.aei.mpg.de/~hewitson
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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