Hello Kirk.
Apologies for late reply.
I have a small correction to my original note before I try to answer your question. Note I will use "%AppData% as the shortcut to reference "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming".
My user settings are actually saved to these two default folders:
-- %AppData%\Camera Bits, Inc\Photo Mechanic
-- %AppData%\Camera Bits, Inc\Photo Mechanic Plus
Here are some reasons for my proposal:
1. Portability And Flexibility:
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I really like the "snapshot" feature in PM and its capacity to fine-tune/alter a metadata template. As I learn more about this feature I have created several snapshots for different catalogs, and hoping to group them into some categories by subfolder.
However, the "manage snapshots" feature only looks to one specific folder for all snapshots:
-- %AppData%\Camera Bits, Inc\Photo Mechanic\IPTCDialogSettings
Creating any subfolders under that folder and moving snapshot files (.snap) to them does not work. The snapshot manager only looks to the preset folder as above for snapshots. I don't know whether this is a restriction due to that preset folder being part of %AppData% or not. Furthermore, saving a snapshot file anywhere on my computer other than the preset folder is not possible either.
It would be useful to move all such "user-defined settings" folders (in PM there are several) to a custom parent location selected by the PM user. For example, D:\MyPM_Bin. Note my example path intentionally proposes a location in other than drive volume C (where the operating system files reside).
The primary benefit would be that %AppData% does not hold user-defined settings for PM.
2. Backup Vulnerabilities With %AppData%:
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%AppData% is a sister folder to these two other Microsoft ones:
-- C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local
-- C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow
I have used and trusted Retrospect for many years as the backup tool for Win10 Pro desktops in my small network. Backup scripts which include %AppData%'s parent folder will sometimes crash because of permission errors (it seems largely related to Microsoft app updates or caches). Those crashes may simply terminate the rest of the backup of the "C:\Users" volume and move on to the next drive volume in the script.
As a consequence, any recent user-defined settings for apps--which use %AppData% to hold them--may not get backed up on that day. In short, a MS-app permission issue causes a backup failure for a non-MS-app's (for example, PM's) user-defined settings.
If those non-MS-app user-defined settings could be stored in a less risky, less daily-volatile, location then life would be less complicated backup-wise.
I have stopped trying to backup the "C:\Users" volume now. But the alternative is to hand-pick a lot of individual software app folders within %AppData% for backup.
3. Free Up Space on Drive Volume C on SSD:
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The %AppData% folder already consumes 8GB on my small 125GB SSD.
I have several other hard disk drives (HDD) in my workstation. These are dedicated to specific purposes. For example, drive D for installation of programs, drive F for all user-generated data, drive V for virtual machines.
My basic goal is to keep my SSD, as best I can, only for operating system stuff. Thus I push out everything else to those HDDs instead. Replacing that SSD in the near term with a larger one is not an option at the moment. I don't think my situation is uncommon.
Valuable SSD space savings could be achieved if more apps could have their user settings, log files, cache and the like, moved to a HDD volume instead.
4. %AppData% Settings Deprecated In Windows 11:
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I confess I'm not very familiar with this story. But just a cautionary note about the reliance on %AppData%.
Thank you very much for listening to my lengthy narrative. PM+ is a great tool; I've waited several years for the catalog database feature to become a reality. Great work!
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Regards, Sam
