Normally, when saving a document, an application offers the /home/document folder. For some reason my KDE4 install is defaulting to a folder on another partition (also called Documents). How do I set/reset the default location for saving documents?

This is not making a lot of sense... applications usually default to saving in their working directory or the last directory that sort of document was saved to.

Probably the easiest approach is to change the name of the errant folder - I expect you'll then get asked for a new default location.

What applications in particular are you talking about?
jdk

Hi Simon and jdkaye

My enquiry has now turned into an academic one. For years, and several Mandrake/Mandriva versions, I have renamed the ~Document directory .Document and replaced it with a symlic link to a similarly named directory on another (FAT32) partition. This has worked flawlessly until this install of Mandriva 2009.1 with KDE4.2. I still have Mandriva 2007.1 on another partition with this arrangement, so it's not a case of forgetting.

I have narrowed the problem to Kwrite. Other applications work as you predicted - but not Kwrite on this install. Following your suggestion, I found that editing the Kwrite entry in the "Start" menu, it is posible to nominate a working directory. When this is set to /home/john/Documents, the Kwrite 'Save' defaults to the Document directory on the other partition (ie to where the symlinc is pointing). If I change the working directory to /home/john, the Kwrite default save becomes /home/john/Documents, which is fine.

All very strange.

hey - I just noticed, you,re a kiwi? Gudduy mate - kia ora.Just a niggle here, you need to be careful when you write about computer things ... a full stop goes immediately at the end of the sentence and has a space after it. You also have to remember the slashes. What you just told me is that you have a directory called ~Document which you changed to .Document - which would be a hidden file. Is that what you meant? The following suggests otherwise.
It must have been an exactly named directory becausesee?KWrite follows it's own rules.Say "main menu" - you'll make more freinds. Mandriva does not have a start menu - that's a Windows thing. Microsoft invents its own jargon in many feilds specifically to increase vendor lockin. We don't like to encourage them.

You said there was a question?

Still - you have done well young padawan.
Your understanding of the ways of the force grow daily.

Kia ora Simon, I'm located at the southern end of the island, just north of the capital.

In your second quote, the 'dot' was where I meant it to be ie ".Document", and the symlink was labelled "Document".

I have since found another application that is behaving like Kwrite - Audacity. Now this confirms the strange behaviour, not seen in previous installs.

I appreciate your complaint about the use of the word "Start" (menu). However, you will note it was in quotes, and the intent was to avoid any ambiguity.

Re: "that's a Windows thing. Microsoft invents its own jargon in many feilds specifically to increase vendor lockin. We don't like to encourage them." That's not peculiar to Microsoft, open source ideals can sometimes be "user lockout". For example, I promote OpenOffice, but recently when talking to someone, it became blindingly obvious that OpenOffice's major disincentive (to widespread adoption), is insisting to default to ODF. No matter how much we may wish for non proprietary formats, the fact is that ".doc" and ".xls" are the default formats exchanged between the majority. Many 'would be' OpenOffice users try it, quickly find it's incompatible, and drop it, paying cash for something that creates ".doc" files. Tunnel vision can affect your perspective.

That's a bit too far for me - Wellington has an active LUG (WellyLUG) - which will probably be your closest. NZOSS is based there too.

Note: Richard Stallman will be paying a visit later this year (around September) keep an eye out.

Cool - that's why I asked rather than assumed.

If you don't want that directory - you are better advised to delete it. If you ant a place to store documents is the local partition - you can relabel it "local-documents" or something.

The symlink would usually get the name of it's target. But you are right - it doesn't have to. If you want this to be used by all apps by default, it is easiest just to call the symlink after the directory being replaced. Remember, it's just a file - *nix just treats it the same and follows instructions.

Otherwise you have to reset the default behavior app by app (or find a distro which puts default locations in an external configuration file ).

One of the things which can frstrate some users is that gnu/linux distributions often have non-consistent behavior between applications. This is a side effect of the distribution coming with a wide range of software from different "vendors".

Different distros have this to different degrees and it's part of finding what's right for you. I tend to get more support requests concerning this for KDE apps - which I put down to that worthys less prescriptive approach (than, say, Gnome) which encourages innovation. But that's just my experience - you'll have noticed that everyone has their prejudices.

The next bit gets a short lecture

eg. Open Office default to open formats...

I can see where you are coming from - unfortunately this lockout is not the choice of Sun or the OASIS group (of which MS was a member). The trouble is that Microsoft refuse to make their formats interoperable with other systems. They even change the formats at irregular intervals to stymie reverse engineering efforts.

This has even had the effect of breaking compatibility between MS applications - compare Office with Works for example. Even differetly licenced editions of Office.

MS Office formats would be great for a defacto standard (everyone uses them - almost) if only they were a standard.

Despite this, OOo will write MS-compatible documents.

This does not help you promote the thing though.

I am also off-topic. We should really stick to the issue in hand in this thread. My main concern is that I am correctly understanding what you write and you cleared that up nicely. Kapai

If you want to know more about how the NZ FOSS community handles the other issues you have raised, please contact me privately.