How to change the location of the user's settings folder?

[piedro]

Hi everyone!

I really like Softmaker Office 2021 as I am testing it right now.
Also it seems to be quite customizable...

Though I cannot find one setting (which is really nagging me..):

I can't find the setting or configuration file to change the location of the folder "Softmaker" in my user home directory!
Probably something really obvious I am missing here and I apologize for bothering you... :-/

I find the settings for the location of templates and so forth though... I can find a bunch of *.ini files but I just do not find the file which controls the path to the "~/Softmaker" folder popping up in my home directory (which really shouldn't be the default btw...).

So: Where do I find the setting that controls the path and location of the folder "Softmaker"?

It is now located at ~/Softmaker and I would like to move the config files to
"~/.config/Softmaker" and the other stuff to "~/.local/share/Softmaker".
These would be the standard locations I guess...

At the least I want to move it to be hidden as "~/.Softmaker"...
(which isn't exactly pretty but far better than having the folder popping up within my home directory everytime I start Softmaker Office...)

So again: How can I control the folder location?

I couldn't find any hint in the *.ini files or dokumentation but the path has to be set somewhere...

Please help me out here! I know that it's probalby only one little tweak...

Thanks a lot for an answer,
p.

[Tom123]

Hi Piedro,

I hit upon the same issue a few days ago (cf. https://forum.softmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=392&t=20147) as many others did some time ago.

It seems, as if this behavior (which contradicts all best practices of Linux) has been implemented by the SoftMaker team on purpose. Don't ask me why.

Here is the (not very sophisticated) workaround, that I have introduced for my Linux system (Linux Mint 18.3):

• Launch each component of SoftMaker office at least once and do some basic configuration (so that the SoftMaker directory is created) and close them afterwards.
• Enhance the start-up scripts under /usr/bin/*21 by some "fake HOME directory" code. here is my textmaker21 script:

  Code: Select all

  #!/bin/sh
  # A script to run TextMaker.
  
  HOME="$HOME"/.SoftMaker21
  
  if [ ! -d "$HOME" ]; then
     mkdir "$HOME"
  fi
  
  /usr/share/office2021/textmaker "$@"
  

• Relocate the SoftMaker configuration directory to $HOME"/.SoftMaker21 and adjust the initialization files.

  Code: Select all

  % cd
  % mkdir .SoftMaker21
  % mv SoftMaker .SoftMaker21
  % cd .SoftMaker21/SoftMaker/Settings
  

  Edit install.ini, pm21config.ini, pr21config.ini, tm21config.ini and replace "SoftMaker" by ".SoftMaker21/SoftMaker".
• Create symbolic links of system configuration folders

  Code: Select all

  % cd ~/.SoftMaker21
  % ln -s ../.cache .
  % ln -s ../.config .
  % ln -s ../.local .
  % ln -s ../.kde .
  

  Depending on your environment, you may need to link other or additional system folders.

That's it. You can now start the different components of SoftMaker office. This approach is definitely not perfect and any suggestions for further improvement are welcome, but so far it works for me.

Regards
Tom

[piedro]

Thank you, Tom!


Really? On purpose... seems really hard to believe...

The configuration has to be set somewhere, even if it's on purpose... somebody could just tell us where...
I mean file paths are never hardcoded in contemporary software! Why would they...?

But thank you so very much for the idea and the specifics of your workaround!

I am an arch linux here and don't mind a bit of fiddling... but the point is that I am testing the suite not for myself but for a small lawyer and acountant firm who wish to switch to ubuntu for security reasons. It's eleven workspaces with more to come... to add custom scripts and workaround solutions for single software packages will most certainly turn out to be administratively hazardous down the road... what about...

The location of the installation, the user's configuration files and the working directory should be included in the installation script somewhere.
The same should be true for the Windows and Mac implementations...

So what's your experience, is the overall software quality more professional than this first impression of lacking basic standards?

I definitely will go on testing... your workaround should be fine. Thx again!

Cheers, p.

[piedro]

Hi Tom!


Checking out your workaraound I prefer to use the script in my users script folder..., ~/.config/all-scripts in my case, ... and edit my user desktop launcher files like "presentations-2021.desktop" to simple launch these scripts...

> rightclick on the launcher for "Textmaker"
> change the start command to "~/.config/all-scipts/textmaker-path.sh"
> Done!

The only thing is that I had to create three scripts for launching texmaker, planmaker and presentations ...

(I couldn't string the home-changing script together with the command to launch the program in the "Exec"-lines... -
so I took the easy way out and created three scripts :-/)

Now I can update (for arch with the pacaur package manager) without overwriting any changes in the systemwide "/usr/share"...
Also individual users can have their own configs and folders. I chose to put the folder in "~/.local/share/softmakerofiice2021"...

I don't think there's need to adjust the *.ini files, I could do it individually via each program's GUI in settings...


Cheers, p.

p.s.: still a nasty, unnecessary workaround to get the basic standard behaviour and configuration...

[Tom123]

Hi Piedro,

I am glad you found a way to workaround that issue. Since I was looking for a way to "correct" the issue at minimum effort for all users on my systems and since I also like to run the openbox window manager and launch SoftMaker Office from the openbox menus, the *.desktop approach was not an option for me. But I created a tar archive of the modified scripts under /usr/bin, so that I can quickly re-install my tweaks after the next SMO update.

As the *.ini files are concerned, you are probably right. It was a bit of a trial & error process when I examined and modified parts of the installation and configuration. And I just took some notes about this process on a sheet of paper, which I consulted before I answered your post.

As your question about the overall software quality is concerned, it is important to understand that I am not a power user of SoftMaker Office. I purchased SMO 2016 about 3 years ago, because I had to translate a large original Word2016 file and found that LibreOffice was not compatible enough to do the job. The compatibility was much better as SMO 2016 is concerned and has even improved in SMO 2021. Still there are some features missing in SMO 2021 compared to Word 2016. I guess you will get a good impression about those gaps, when you read the posts in this forum.

Good luck & enjoy
Tom