BookSmart
Booksmart 1.9 still saves Books on C:\ by default!!!!In this thread I complained that Booksmart still saves book files on C:\ by default…. I concluded by saying that a new version of Booksmart should actually solve this silly ‘90s Windows-95 era problem, of installing by default the data in Disk C: no questions asked! They promised to forward the issue to the development team. Booksmart 1.9 is here, and I already made a remark on the sticky note… No-one answered. So, I guess it deserves its own topic to raise its attention. The question remains: HOW CAN YOU STORE YOUR FILES ON A SELECTABLE FOLDER in Booksmart 1.9, as ALL 2007 software programs allow you to do? (include all your competitors of course!) Regards, Yannis 
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I also complained about this. I have moved my "My Documents" folder to a different drive so that I have more space for photos and things like Booksmart books. But Booksmart still writes the data to the C:\ drive – it actually created a My Documents folder on my C:\ drive in order to have a place to put the data. It seems very odd to me that Blurb has hard coded this path. |
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After 5+ days, still not an answer….. a yes or a no, or a whatever…. So, let me make it a bit easier for the Blurb techies. .... I will put it in a multiple choice type of question, so they don’t have to spend time with writing an elaborate answer! Just give me the just the letter…..(a) to (e) Do you Blurb people intend to make Booksmart 1.9 save books at any user-selectable folder and not just C:\ by default? a) yes, definately when Booksmart 1.9 glitches are sorted out, within the next 2 weeks or so… b) we are thinking about it, but it’s not a priority. Probably in Booksmart 4.5. Probably.. c) why the heck would you want that? C:\ is fine… We have enough problems already d) buy a larger C:\ hard disk, re-install Windows, re-install everything, and your problem is solved. e) you are a pn in the a... Don’t expect an answer. Let the question drown in the thread
So? |
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It should read "Just give me the letter…..(a) to (e)" |
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Yannis, Booksmart 1.9 supports multiple drives and partitions. The only dependency is the following: The booksmartdata directory must be installed on the same drive or partition as the User home directory. To change the location, you would simply type in the drive or absolute address as a fellow Blurbarian describes in this post. -Ben Senior Technical Support Specialist |
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Ben, Thanks for your answer, but it doesn’t quite address the problem. The issue that Yannis and I are describing is not a matter of where Booksmart is installed. I had no trouble installing it on the D:\ drive. The problem is the location of the booksmartdata directory. My experience (with 1.8.1, have to say I have not checked 1.9, as I am not going to upgrade until after the book I am currently working on) was that Booksmart did not put the data directory in the same drive or partition as my home directory. I moved my home directory to the D:\ drive months ago. Instead, Booksmart created a new "My Documents" folder for me on my C:\ drive, where it would be by default, and put the booksmartdata folder in that location. Yannos indicates, in his original post, that the same thing is still happening in 1.9. I am a programmer myself, and I have to say that I find this to be very bad behavior by the program. It appears that the location was hardcoded, rather than the current user’s home directory being looked up. If that is not the case, then something else is wrong. (I wouldn’t have found the data at all, except that Picasa picked up the cover .jpg.) Best would be a settings dialog where you can override the default location in the program. Maybe you would like to avoid that, in order to have as clean as possible a user experience. The minimum expectation would be that the program at least uses the user’s actual home directory for data, rather than making up a new location. I personally don’t expect a full release for such a small code change, but I would hope that this could make it into the next 1.9 patch release. Thanks, Steve |
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Steve, thanks for explaining our (joint!) point…. The book data (NOT the program) directory is put in C:\ no questions asked! Ben, now that the issue is fully explained, could we hope for a resolution to the problem? (so…. the multiple choice question still remains unanswered..) |
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I agree that this is an issue. At one point in time, my system became very slow and then crashed because my C drive was full (I didn’t realize Booksmart was using C for storage). I have about 31GB on C. All my programs are using about 15GB. Of course, when Booksmart uses C also, drive fills up very quickly. |
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...in order not polute my data backup, I do not want to install any programs on D. |
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I think what needs to be determined is which directory is the "user home directory" |
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From what I can see on my system the Booksmart data is placed in your My Documents folder, which by default is on the C:\ in the Documents and Settings directory, you can however move this to another drive. As long as the developers have followed standards the data should then be stored on another drive. If I remember rightly when you change your My Documents location it will prompt you to move everything from the current location if you want to. I hope this may help to get you guys out of trouble. Louis |
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Sorry for coming in late on this thread but I also had the problem with storage space so I manually transferred my completed books from my documents folder to another folder on a backup drive. I seem to be able to to move each of the book folders back and forth as needed without a problem. Does free up a lot of space. Nice to do this automatically. Oh yes I’m still on v1.8. |
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@brokendreams You CAN change the place of the My Documents folder in Windows XP indeed. You CANNOT change thought where Blurb stores the Book data. @Louis As Steve sais, EVEN if you change the place of the \My Documents folder, Booksmart keeps saving on C:\My Documents !!!! Well, this is really awkward since C:\ fills up and then I wouldn’t want to describe how we (in all firms that I have worked for) call those programers that bypass normal coding instructions, issues and practices and hard-code programs to specific Windows XP folders (I am a Computer Engineer myself). You wouldn’t want….
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Yes, you CAN change the location that "My Documents" points to, But my question is, can you change "c:\Documents and Settings\carlos" to "e:\Documents and Settings\carlos"? And the ultimate question: does booksmart consider the "User Home Directory" to be "My Documents" OR "Documents and Settings\carlos"?
The implication then is: a. if booksmart considers your "user home drive" to be the same drive that "documents and settings\carlos", and documents and settings\carlos is on c:\, then booksmart will store data on c:\ b. if booksmart considers the "user homedrive" you be the same drive "my documents" points to, and "my documents " is on e:\ then booksmart has a bug |
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You can also create what is called a Junction Point on an NTFS drive that will redirect a directory location to some place else, however junctions are not for the fainthearted. There are a number of utils to help with this, there is a command line util from SysInternals (now Microsoft) or there is a gui called Junction Magic from Rekenwonder which appears to work and is a little more intuative than Junction. I’ve given it a quick test and it appears to do the job. Louis |
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I am not very well versed in Windows XP terminology, my background is in Unix systems. So I have used "home directory" and the "my documents" folder as interchangeable terms. It looks like they are not, so sorry to muddy the waters. What we are discussing is the My Documents folder. That, however, is a distraction from the main point. As Yannis says, the point is this: If you have your My Documents folder on your C:\ drive, Booksmart will put the booksmartdata folder there. If you have your My Documents folder on another drive, Booksmart will still put the booksmartdata folder on the C:\ drive, by making up a brand new My Documents folder for it to be in. This is bad behavior for the software. Louis, those are good pointers to some directory tools (looks like you can do on NTFS what you can do under a regular Unix system with that), but I don’t think that it should be the responsibility of the user to re-map their file system to make a piece of consumer grade software work correctly. My feeling is that this is a case where agitating for the software to be fixed is appropriate. |
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Hi Steve |
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Couldn’t you just work on one book at a time? And export the rest to a different location? |
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You could but it’s not the ideal situation. |
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Hallo, I have started creating my picture book some days ago. Now I understand your problem. A book with 100 pages can have about 500MB and more. This fills up my C: drive where a lot of programms are installed. I have a lot of free space on my external hard drives and want to save my data and also the photo book there. I have tried a lot, but nothing helps to tell BookSmart that the data should not be saved on the C: drive. It’s realy anoing in the 21 century to have a program that behaves like one of the begining of good old windows days. Chrismas is near, and maybe the developers have some open hearts to fix this and everyone can choose where the data from their books should go. Thx a lot |
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I can’t believe this is still an issue! Is this going to be addressed? |
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Hi all, We do indeed plan to address this issue in the future. Please note 1.9.4 was really a stabilization release, and we purposely stayed away from adding new features or options as those often bring along some new bugs. Our goal this time was to fix some of the more painful crashes and bugs, and save enhancements for upcoming releases. We look forward to making BookSmart more flexible in the future. Thank you for your patience in the meantime. Cheers, |
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