Req: Save and load all PL settings

[photoken]

I've just finished doing a clean install of Windows 10. I have two user accounts: an administrator and a standard user.

Running as the standard user, I spent a significant amount of time setting up PL's options and UI layout just the way I like it. However, after logging in as the administrator, I needed to repeat all that work to set up PL.

I'd like the PL settings to have a single button to save all PL's options and UI layout configuration data to disk, as a single file. Then another button would load all the options and UI layout configuration data from a specified file.

Reducing the tedium of setting up PL in another account (or on another computer) to a single click would be a Very Good Thing (and would be a wonderful backup, as well).

[Hoogo]

What about the USB stick mode with the additional folder "Usersettings"?

[Eurgail]

The complete PhotoLine settings consist of one folder in the appdata and one registry key, so it's easy to save it theoretically.
But i agree: It's not that easy for a normal users and one has to know it. And with an ex- and import option there could also come the possibility to convert between normal and portable installation profiles, that is virtually impossible now.

[photoken]

As I understand it, PL's data (on Windows) is kept in three places: the System Registry, the user's AppData directory, and the UI configuration (if saved) in a layout.xml file.

That's a lot of stuff, and there are lots of registry entries and lots of files in the AppData directory, and accessing the registry entries and the AppData directory is problematic when logged in as a different user.

My primary goal is to have the most simple method of re-creating the user's PL Everything, and backing it up.

If the single "Everything" file is a binary file that only PL can read and understand, so much the better. Since PL obviously has code to write and read its data to the appropriate locations when running the program, I'd like to have PL leverage that code to export all its data and configurations into that single "Everything" file for transfer and backup.

The same is true for importing the "Everything" data into another instance of PL. PL would know which sections of the "Everything" file need to be written to the Registry, which sections need to be written to the AppData directory, and how to import the UI configuration.

[Eurgail]

As far as i know, the only difference between standard and portable installation is the location of the settingsfolder and the storage of the configuration (not in the registry but in an xml file).
So i think, it's not that difficult to let PhotoLine copy als these things in one folder choosed by the user. In my opinion these could be technically the same as a "convert to portable" function, because it's not important to have the registry entries in a reg file, if PhotoLine also allows importing them (so the conversion from xml to reg happens here).
The "Everything" file can be done by putting the collected configuration folder into an zip archive (since the algorithm is already in PhotoLine for PDF compression).
An import to portable could be then to manually extract the archive to the PhotoLine folder...

[Hoogo]

I'm not sure what happens if you start PL normally, create the folders "Usersettings" and end PL?
If PL just checks for the folder before saving, then it should store all settings into that folder.
If such a check before save happens, then this would also be a way to turn the USB version into a normal one, for what good reason ever.

[Eurgail]

If PL just checks for the folder before saving, then it should store all settings into that folder.

Could be a simple method but it doesn't.

for what good reason ever

For configuration transfer and backup...