Naming convention for config files

As it stands right now the code looks for a .manim.cfg in the user directory, and a manim.cfg in the current working directory. Note the difference in the leading dot.

The initial reason for this was the convention to hide configuration files that go in the user directory, which is far as I get is only a Linux relevant convention, since Windows uses file attributes to hide files, not leading dots.

I’m opposed to this mixed naming for two reasons.

1. The smaller reason is copypastability, as like this either file could almost directly be used as a template for the other, but with the additional hoop of having to add/remove a dot.
2. The bigger reason is the potential for confusion. Having the naming convention differ in just one character, and a dot at that, is a sure fire recipe for some people to forget this small difference at times, leading to wrongly named and hence not working config files, or even completely missing that difference in the first place, since it’s easy to miss the addition/subtraction of a dot on a file name when already primed for one or the other convention. Point in case, despite carefully reading @leotrs post in #178 2 mentions of .manim.cfg made me completely miss that on the third time it was intentionally manim.cfg.

With that said I have no strong opinion on what the convention is, so long as it is consistent. With dot, without, or accepting with/without in both places are all fine.

Probably allowing both presence and lack of a leading dot is the best approach simply to allow Linux users to hide their config files or not while also making sure that config files can’t that easily be misnamed.

[XorUnison]

For Windows that’d most likely be %appdata%, which means: \[Username]\AppData\Roaming\ And then to be specific: \[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Manim\manim.cfg

In this case AppData is the hidden folder. And now that you made me think of it… very yes. Although newbie users might not know about the AppData folder, it’s indeed were programs should store their configuration, so that migrating it to a different machine/user makes all of the programs using it behave the same. I’m in favor of this too then as it would definitely be good practice, now we’re just missing the according place for Mac.

[naveen521kk]

No, I myself have tested it on Windows. So, no problem.