I suggest mending the implementation for Windows networks
85)
We seem not to be able to run Maple 10 properly on our Uni network. The problem is that users can not save preferences or use the Compiler. It seems the problem is due to poor programming practice by Maplesoft, although the issue is obscure and I am prepared to be convinced that the problem is our Computing Service's implementation of it.
The problem is (I believe) this.
Our system is as follows (under XP Pro): All users and
PC's live in our Active Directory and all software is applied via group
policy. Users have roaming profiles (which are not backed-up!) and their
'Start menu' and 'Desktop' are redirected to a 'read-only' server location
(which we can customise for consistency). Their 'My Documents' folder is
redirected to the user's network home directory (which is backed-up!).
Maple apparently tries to write directly to folders under Documents and Settings, rather than writing to the users profile.
Maple apparently does this "regardless of the value of MultiUserProfile or UserDirectory in the maplesys.ini file". (These values only change the location of the maple10.ini file for the Classic Interface.)
It is a real pain getting students to change their settings once to avoid the 2-D input. Having to get them to do it every time they start Maple is a nightmare!
Toby
- A procedure
3 hours 6 min ago - ellipse
4 hours 28 min ago - Also try the options scaling, gridrefine and crossingrefine
5 hours 46 min ago - Try implicitplot
6 hours 29 min ago - The patch
8 hours 5 min ago - thx!
8 hours 30 min ago - The source of the bug
8 hours 49 min ago - my concern is ...
9 hours 44 min ago - plotting with the "Standard interface"
10 hours 3 min ago - variant
10 hours 22 min ago
Windows network *still* wrong?
I am told that with Maple 11 something has been done to fix the problem described above, but a poor choice has been made.
So now Maple 11 tries to write to the User's profile, but it writes to the "LocalSettings" area. This area is intended for settings particular to one machine that one does *not* want replicated back to the user profile.
Consequently, users still can not make changes to their preferences that survive to a log on with a different machine.
Why was this done, and is there some way round it?
Toby
seems correct to me.
It seems to me as though Maple 11 is doing the correct thing by using Windows API calls to write to that area rather than writing directly to a folder as you seem to indicate was being done with Maple 10. Likewise, that should make it work with Vista too, whereas the other would not, due to more stringent controls concerning writing to things such as .ini files outside the actual users's domain. For example, in WinXP an ini file residing within the Windows folder is easily updated using the Windows API calls while in Vista, when a write is attempted to a .ini file in the Windows folder, the .ini file is first copied to the user's folder area by the OS, updated, and then all subsequent read/writes occur there.
As I recall, Win98 did something sort of lamely resembling that with .inf files (used for device driver install). It would make a copy of the .inf file with a really strange name prefix, and place it within a separate folder, rather than creating a new oem_xx.inf file like XP does. It's been a while since my driver writng days in Win98 so some of this information may not be entirely correct. These sort of issues have always been kind of a pain for driver developers as well as just higher-level application developers.
You may need to contact Maple support to really find out what is going on and why.
WinXp - Vista INI file handling
An example of what I was trying to describe above -
Below is a link to an archive containing a simple program that creates and writes to a .ini file using the Windows API function calls, to show how such a file is handled by Vista compared with WinXP.
There is a readMe.txt file in the archive that explains everything about what to do to test it in Vista and WinXP as well as the VisualBasic source code files for those who may not feel comfortable just executing the .exe file within the archive.
VistaTest.zip
Yes, but it's writing to the wrong subdirectory
Tim,
Yes, it's now writing using API calls, which is good.
What is not good is the choice of writing to LocalSettings since that location is intended for data specific to the particular machine and so it is not backed up to the user's roaming profile.
So if you save your preferences on one machine on a network and then move to another machine they are lost.
It seems a bizarre decision by Maplesoft, unless there is some way round it or I have misunderstood the situation.
Toby
My guess
is that this was ``fixed'' for Vista (as Tim points out, it had to be), but whoever fixed it was thinking single-user and not network when they did it. It just feels like an oversight rather than an explicit design. 11.02?
We have not heard from DJ Clayworth in a while, he could probably enlighten us on this issue.
network configuration woes, redux
Has anyone made any progress on this issue?
We are facing the unpleasant situation of having to tell students they will need to reset their configuration (default to worksheets, with Maple notation input) each time they use a different computer.
Is there not any global initialization where this can be set once and for all?
With hopes that either someone will have something new to add to this discussion or this post will help to raise awareness of this issue among the developers to the point where it will be resolved.
Thanks for reading,
Doug