FYI, the PortableApps PAF installer is still being updated to pull down the latest official installer and install it in PAF directory structure. It is however still marked as a developer version so does not auto update.
I've experimented a bit with it and for me it had some issues like repeatedly losing customizations such as exports, scripts, actions, tag panel layout, custom columns... in short just about everything that can be changed by a user.
Without the benefit of automatic updates through the PAF updater, there's absolutely no point in using PAF format. You'd be better of just copying the program folder into the PortableApps folder and copy your settings from %APPDATA%\MP3Tag to the MP3Tag program folder. Just as portable as the PAF version, and as long as you don't look at the folder structure, you won't know the difference from within the PA Menu launcher, but at least you can be sure your settings don't go MIA
Hi,
I remember the last time I used portable version (6 years ago already ????) I faced a special kind of "beast" behavour. Export & script folders were temporary available on a different disk location (%appdata%/mp3tag ?????) for as long as Portable mp3tag was running.
Of course %appdata%/mp3tag should not exist when no mp3tag is intalled/running or "desktop-version" mp3tag has not been uninstalled (correctly).
I am not sure whether automatic PAF updater is feasible for all kind of PortableApps. It depends on the original package distributor IMHO.
My thought was someone would manually update the PAF after each mp3tag update.
The effect you saw was a 'feature' in action. It allows people to create portable launchers for programs which are not portable by themselves. Such launchers will copy the user data to the location where the 'portabalized' program expects to find it. Often such launchers will also read in the necessary registry information before launching the actual program.
At the time you experienced this, MP3tag likely did not yet supported the saving of user data within its own program folder, or the launcher author wasn't aware of this option at the time, causing the behavior you noticed.
And you are correct, the automatic PAF updater only applies to software that fits the PortableApps criteria and gets listed in their directory, the main two being that it must be freeware and it must be open source. Since MP3tag does not fit the criteria, the launcher can only be distributed through the forum, and like you commented already, the launcher author updates it whenever a new version of MP3tag is released.
Sadly it doesn't handle the user data in a safe manner as I have lost all settings several times already. If you don't change settings often, you could minimize the irritation by also copying it to the App\DefaultData folder. If you then experience such loss of settings, exiting and deleting the .\Data folder, the launcher will create a new .\Data from the DefaultData content. restoring all your lost settings. But still, it's a kludge and MP3tag is portable enough by itself if it finds all of the user data within its own program folder.
Hence there is no need to use the PAF launcher if you can live with a non-PAF folder structure.