Portable XY to reference relative paths

avsfan · Post by **avsfan** » 07 Mar 2008 17:18

Hi,

This should be simple, but I'm just not getting it...

I'm trying to set something up so that I can show a friend how great XY is, but he does almost all his work off of flash drives on different computers (which end up showing up as different drive letters on the different machines).

What I'm looking for is the ability to have XY on the flash drive, and have it start up with a few tabs open pointing to different paths on the flash drive (so that they'll always point to the desired location when he starts XY).

So far, it appears that only the absolute paths are remembered when XY is closed... I thought read somewhere that I could use a "?" in place of the drive letter in the address bar, but that didn't seem to work...

Sorry to be clueless on this... I didn't see anything in the wiki either...

Thanks for any suggestions!

Post by **serendipity** » 07 Mar 2008 17:22

I think you read it here:
http://88.191.26.34/XYwiki/index.php/Portability

avsfan · Post by **avsfan** » 07 Mar 2008 19:15

Thanks for the reminder.

I tried this, and when I set up the first tab, I put "?:\XYlorer" in the address bar, which changed the tab title to the actual path (and, as a result, when I start up on a different machine, the path is not found).

The "?" trick says it will work in all locations, and *does* work in the address bar, but not in tab locations (or is there another way to specify the tab location?). Any additional thoughts?

Also, what would be required to get XY to automatically start when the flash drive is inserted?

Thanks!

Post by **admin** » 07 Mar 2008 19:21

avsfan wrote:The "?" trick says it will work in all locations, and *does* work in the address bar, but not in tab locations (or is there another way to specify the tab location?). Any additional thoughts?

Hmmm, right, I never thought about making the tab locations portable. Would look funny to have all those "?:\..." in the captions... this needs more thinking.

Additional thought: Favorites Folders do store portable location terms. Also, of course, the Catalog and UDCs and Scripting.

avsfan wrote:Also, what would be required to get XY to automatically start when the flash drive is inserted?

Nothing that XY could do. Ask the flash drive.

avsfan · Post by **avsfan** » 07 Mar 2008 19:28

admin wrote:
avsfan wrote:The "?" trick says it will work in all locations, and *does* work in the address bar, but not in tab locations (or is there another way to specify the tab location?). Any additional thoughts?
Hmmm, right, I never thought about making the tab locations portable. Would look funny to have all those "?:\..." in the captions... this needs more thinking.

Additional thought: Favorites Folders do store portable location terms. Also, of course, the Catalog and UDCs and Scripting.

I was just thinking about this related to scripting -- would it be possible to have an "autostart" or "startup" script that could be used for something like this? i.e. remove all tabs, then create portable tabs from the script... OK, maybe not such a good idea, but a startup script could be useful for other things...

admin wrote:
avsfan wrote:Also, what would be required to get XY to automatically start when the flash drive is inserted?
Nothing that XY could do. Ask the flash drive.

I'll see what I can find... I was hoping that there was something standard like an autorun that's used on a CD...

Thanks!

Post by **admin** » 08 Mar 2008 07:22

avsfan wrote:"startup" script ...

Yes, I have thought about that as well. Later...

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 08 Mar 2008 11:46

Side note: Maybe XY could support relative syntax on its startup path (command line & config). So one could ensure that XY always starts for example in the root or any folder of the drive it's running from (eg. USB, CD, etc)