Hello jem and Þorvarður,

On Aug 19, 2011, at 4:26 AM, Þorvarður Davíðsson wrote:

> 
> On 15.08.2011, at 20:17, jem cabanes wrote:
> 
>>> (…)  it’s no use having an ~/Library folder if the /Users/~/Applications folder is gone.
>> 
>> This is new to me. What am I missing? I've always seen Applications on /HD/Applications, never on ~/Applications. And yet ~/Library is a pretty good use.
>> 
>> 
> 
> Since OS 10.4.11 and all the way till OS 10.6.8 there has always been ~/Applications on my computer. I think it is a pre-installed default folder for those applications you only want to install in your user account (and not for all users). This folder has an "A" on it, in other words, it does not look like a normal folder and because of this I am pretty sure that it was created by the installer and not by me.

It seems your discussions are based on some inaccurate understanding. In OS 10 system (that is Unix system), there is no "/HD/Applications", and no "/Users/~/Applications". The first "/" in the path string stands for "root", that is the highest directory in the system hierarchy. It is the booting hard disk. The "Applications" folder which you find at the first level of your booting hard disk (along with "/System", "/Library" and "/Users") is "/Applications".

The "~/" stands for (or is a shorthand for) the current user's folder. My "~/" folder is "/Users/ni/" ("ni" standing for "Nobumi Iyanaga"); jem's "~/" folder may be "/Users/jem/" and so on. There are "~/Desktop", "~/Documents", "~/Downloads" (after Leopard), "~/Library", "~/Movies", "~/Music", "~/Pictures", "~/Public" and "~/Sites" (after Leopard?) in that folder. As long as I know, "~/Applications" was never a default folder in "~/"; but you could always create it (at least from 10.2 onward) and it behaved somehow like "/Applications" folder (for example, the "services" that some applications provide could be recognized by the system if you put them in either in "/Applications" or in "~/Applications".

There are three "Library" folder in every system. "/Library", "/System/Library" and "~/Library". The "/System/Library" is somehow special, but "/Library" and "~/Library" are similar in function (for example, they both have "Application Support", "Preferences", "Services" folders). The only difference is that "/Library" is for all users, and "~/Library" is only for the current user. For example, I have
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist
and
/Users/ni/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist
(or)
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

As I have my Microsoft Office applications in /Applications, they can be used by all users on this computer; this is the function of "/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist", but each user has different settings for MS Office applications, so there is "~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist".

Visible or not, there must be a "Library" folder in the current user account.

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan