Problem locating GPKEEP folder

A GEMPACK windows program needs be able to store information (such as user preferences) between sessions. The information is stored in INI and (sometimes) other files. The program has to locate a folder in which to store these files.

Normally the program will locate the "user" folder (perhaps "C:\My Documents") and create beneath this a folder named GPKEEP, then create below that a folder named after the program (say, TABmate). The INI file would be stored in this bottom level folder, and so might be named (in Windows 7):

C:\Users\username\Documents\GPKEEP\TABmate\TABmate.ini

Problems may arise if:

(i) you have no user folder.

(ii) you are not allowed to create or modify files in the user folder.

(iii) the full pathname of the INI file is very long, or contains Asian characters.

To circumvent such problems you can define an environment variable GPKEEP. The value of this variable will be used instead of the user folder. Suppose you set the environment variable GPKEEP to C:\mystuff. Then the INI file would be named:

C:\MyStuff\GPKEEP\TABmate\TABmate.INI

The program will create the necessary folders if they do not already exist.

If the program cannot locate a suitable KEEP folder for the INI file, there will be an error. The error message may contain a log showing the success or otherwise of different stages in the process of finding or creating directories, and testing whether it is possible to create files in those directories. On some programs, the top-level menu command Help..About..Diagnostics will give further relevant information.