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                           About Profile Manager
 
This section describes how to use the MS OS/2 Profile Manager to store and
retrieve information about your application and the system from the MS OS/2
initialization files. Before reading this section, you should be familiar
with the MS OS/2 initialization files.
 
Profile Manager enables applications to create their own initialization
files and to access the MS OS/2 initialization files, os2.ini and
os2sys.ini. An initialization file is a convenient place to store
information between sessions. Just as MS OS/2 uses the os2.ini and
os2sys.ini files to store configuration information for when it starts, an
application can create initialization files that store information it uses
to initialize windows and data when it starts.
 
Because all initialization files are binary files, the user cannot view or
edit them directly. A file consists of one or more sections; each section
contains one or more settings, or keys. Each key consists of two parts: a
name and a value. Both section names and key names are null-terminated
strings. A key value can be a null-terminated string, a null-terminated
string representing a signed integer, or individual bytes of data.
 
The MS OS/2 initialization files, os2.ini and os2sys.ini, contain sections
and settings used by the MS OS/2-system applications (such as Desktop
Manager, Control Panel, and Print Manager). Although applications can read
settings from the MS OS/2 initialization files, only rarely will an
application need to change a setting. One common task that does change the
settings in the MS OS/2 initialization files is adding a group and program
list to Desktop Manager. For example, the installation program for an
application can create a new group for the application and its related
utilities by using Profile Manager functions.
 
Once an initialization file is created, an application can rename, copy,
move, and delete the file just like any other file. Although an application
can also read and write to the file as if it were a binary file, the
application should always use Profile Manager functions to access the
contents of the file.
 
 
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