OSDev.org

zeitue wrote:I have decided to store the user configurations in single files in the users Home Folder /Homes/$USERNAME/.user/Resources/Configurations/$PROGRAMNAME/config.$EXT
but I'm going to have the core system settings stored in both formats text type /System/Resources/Configurations/$FILENAME.$EXT and binary /System/Resources/Configurations/System.bin

The rule of thumb is not to store duplicate information to avoid out-of-synchronize problems. What happen when the user changed the text file, or both files, do it override the binary or there is some kind of merge algorithm ? (This also against the rule of least surprise.)

zeitue wrote:No but I think if the Windows Registry was not binary it would be easier to work with.
I think if the registry was set to single entry then it would be hard to mess up.

These are not the problem of windows registry. There is a dedicated editor, it is already easy to work with. There is backup mechanism and I seldom heard of corruption.

However, the problem of single registry is that every application on the machine store information at the same place, and you need to load/cache a few megabytes of data even you never use 98% of them.

bluemoon wrote:
The rule of thumb is not to store duplicate information to avoid out-of-synchronize problems. What happen when the user changed the text file, or both files, do it override the binary or there is some kind of merge algorithm ? (This also against the rule of least surprise.)

The text form would be the only one edited and the binary would then be updated from the text file; that was the plan at least.