RM8 and a To Go thumb drive; default folders and two executables

RootsMagic
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1

I have two questions regarding RM8 and a To Go thumb drive. If these should be asked in two different posts, I’ll be happy to change this.

First, I am using RM8 on a Mac OSX 12.1.

  1. Where are the default folder specifications stored? I ran RM8 from a thumb drive, changed the default folders to point to a folder on the thumb drive and closed the program. I then ran RM8 from the Mac hard drive and found that the default folders still pointed to the thumb drive. I am guessing, therefore, that the defaults are not inside the app. Maybe in a plist or some file that didn’t move to the thumb drive.

  2. How can I get the Windows executable on my thumb drive without installing it on a Windows machine? I only have a Mac, but would like to use a Windows machine at the local Family History Center. And I certainly can’t install it there.

Thank you.

2

In windows, the default folder information is stored in

C:\Users\userid\AppData\Roaming\RootsMagic\Version 8\RootsMagicUser.xml

where “userid” is your Windows userid. I don’t know how it works on a Mac, but I’m assuming that it’s some global Mac setting that’s stored on the Mac’s hard disk, conceptually similar to the AppDate xml file on Windows. It’s definitely not stored in the database or otherwise on the thumb drive, which is what you need for your use case. As it is, when you change the default folders for RM on your computer, you are changing it for your computer - not for your database. That’s even true if you are totally on one machine if you have two different databases for which you would like to have two different sets of media files.

I used to use the old RM-To-Go on RM7 a great deal. I honestly can’t remember the details of how I managed the default folders. In the case of the database folder, the backup folder, the GEDCOM folder, and the report folder, you can always just sort of ignore the defaults and still get your work done by directing any of your file operations to the correct folder. But the media folder is different because RM keeps links to your media files in the database. RM7 and RM8 can therefore both have issues with media files in a To-Go environment.

The issue with RM7 was that media links were absolute and therefore would always point to the folder on your home machine even though you were in a To-Go environment. The default media folder really didn’t matter.

The issue with RM8 is that media links are relative, which is a good thing. But relative to what? Well, they are relative the the default media folder which is still stored in some sort of configuration file on your home computer and not in your database.

So I think the To-Go support in RM7 didn’t really do everything it needed to do to work smoothly, and I think that the To-Go support in RM8 really needs some additional functionality in order to work smoothly.