Feedback Case Number: 63370
SpecialFolder (across Web 1.0 and 2.0) on Linux returns Nil for some folders (e.g. Documents)
Well this has been âClosed - By Designâ immediately. A little frustrated as prior to raising I had verified with Xojo support that it was likely a bug.
Anyways, the reasoning was a reference to the Notes section in SpecialFolder:
The second bit there kinda infers that if the path doesnât exist then itâll return Nil. We had created the folder locations to overcome this issue, but still Nil gets returned from a call (e.g. SpecialFolder.Documents).
There was a folder named âDocumentsâ in the home directory in these tests. It is my opinion that these locations should not be nil, because they could be created. SpecialFolder returning nil makes these perfectly valid locations unnecessarily difficult to use.
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The problem is that just creating the folders doesnât mean that the OS recognizes them. In most headless linux server (non-GUI) environments there is no need for Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures because itâs not a user interactive environment and thereâs no way to view or listen to such files.
AFAIK this is not a choice that we made, rather itâs what the underlying OS frameworks return when we request these items.
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That is interesting, thank you for taking the time to explain it!