Windows itself sometimes writes file data into the registry for indexing for example the mui entries or shell folder specific stuff in the portion of the user registry. But this isnt required for normal program operations an the program will run with or without its existence.

I am suggesting that future versions of all software not use the Windows registry and instead store information in its own data files.

The reason I suggest this is because when software uses the Windows registry it is tied to that computer. I recently installed PMAIL in WINE (Linux) and move data files from my PMAIL installation on my Windows partition into the newly installed PMAIL in WINE and could not get the new PMAIL installation working because the new installation did not have required information that was written to the Windows registry on my Windows partition.

If PMAIL used 100% of its own configuration files instead of storing information in the Windows registry then this problem would not have occurred.

What I've had to do is copy the installation directory from my old Windows partition into WINE and use it as is. I'm not sure if it will be updatability.

I cannot understand why the Windows registry was used in the first place. The MS-DOS structure of applications was perfect; everything in one directory.. instead now, we have applications being 'installed' - scattered all over a file system.

Here is a typical Win32 application structure:

%root%/Program Files/(APPLICATION)

%root%/Program Files/Uninstall Information/(APPLICATION)

%root%/Documents and Settings/(USER)/application data/

(Windows registry)

What I would do would be something like this:

%root%/Program Files/(APPLICATION)

(APPLICATION)/global.pref

In the application directory would be a 'users' directory and inside a users directory:

/users/harry.smith-abc.com/configuration/preference.conf

/users/george.halloway-whatever.com/configuration/preferences.conf

Of course these directories would have ownership rules for the logged in user to prevent other users from accessing the directories.

Now, lets assume one has built a new computer and wants to transfer the application over; all they would have to do is cut and paste the directory over to the new file system.

At the moment, a full installation and reconfiguration is required. Yes, you probably could export individual strings from the registry, but is this practical? No.

Mercury need to use the Windows registry only for enabling service mode. Other than that all information that the program requires to run is stored in ini files in the program directory.

/Rolf 

This is not true. Mercury and Pmail has been using the Windows registry long before service mode existed.

Mercury does make an entry in the registry pointing to the installation directory, which can be handy for addon programs that need to locate the Mercury directory. However, apart from the Windows service details all configuration settings for Mercury are in the ini files.

/Rolf 

At the time pm and mercury was designed i was best practice to do so. Nowdays is a diffrent talk. But i think you can simply export the key values in .reg files annimport it. Done.

[quote user="Nikolas"]This is not true. Mercury and Pmail has been using the Windows registry long before service mode existed.[/quote]

I'm fairly sure it is the installer that creates most (if not all) the reg entries, and they are not used for any configuration data.