Hi Pior,

I have been following this conversation but have a different opinion. It seems to me that the single .ini file is both a common and a reasonable solution to save application configuration. From decades of use and administration of larger scale multi-user systems, a common settings file or directory for each user was typical. When a new version of software was installed, all users were exposed to the new features and at the same time maintained all of their personalized settings for that application. Although most modern systems are no longer really multi-user, from a developer's perspective, the task of maintaining the personalized settings as common to an application is similar: it is very important to make sure new versions don't damage the settings, but at the same time allow users to make changes that can be seen by multiple versions. In my experience using MoI, Michael has done an excellent job of providing this capability & I would hope that he would not create version specific settings files. As has been mentioned in this thread, a user does have the ability to create and use version specific settings files if they choose to do so.

As to your experience with reverting the settings back toward the defaults and testing features, I can only say that's what system backups are for, or perhaps making an intentional copy of the settings file(s) before you commence the testing. I agree with you that it would be both scary and frustrating to to have reverted the settings in the new version and then return to the old version to find that your customizations were missing. If that did happen, I suspect that your first inclination would probably be to look in your system backups.

I have very much appreciated that the beta versions of MoI use the same settings as this makes it natural to be able to test the new version. I've also appreciated that if I make a setting change in the beta, it is (within reason) also used when I use the prior version--for example a change to axis colors being usable by multiple versions. I think that having a number of settings files would end up being very cumbersome to deal with.

--Larry