Tor's email:

With the first option, you're forcing users to
keep all the projects they're working on open,
forever, unless they want to lose their settings
(all run parameters such as arguments, working
directories, etc., their reference point maps,
...)   That doesn't seem to scale well.
I can easily manage somebody having 30 projects.
Not only will this slow down the IDE (Project.find
has to do a lot more work), it's less convenient
for the user (having to scroll and search in the
explorer).
I think it's nice that NetBeans lets you have
multiple projects open, but it's bad if it
-forces- you to do it.

As a user I was quite surprised to have my
settings lost when I closed the project, so if we
keep this behavior, we should definitely provide a
warning dialog.


The second option (moving the settings to the
.project folder) is bad too because:
- it removes the possibility to share a project
file in a central location (unless you rename the
personal settings to be on a  per-user basis, e.g.
/tmp would contain MyProject/,
 MyProject-jan, MyProject-vita, MyProject-svata,
or perhaps
 MyProject/Personal/{jan,vita,svata}.
- it removes the possibility to have private (not
just personal) settings that others can't see for
a shared project. For example, it's possible that
some module may write password information into
the personal settings; if these are moved off to
some public location that wouldn't be good.
- it removes the possibility to use projects in
read-only areas. For example, the Forte Developer
CD came bundled with a bunch of benchmarking and
example projects on the CD. people could open
these projects and run them; but you can't persist
my settings on the CD.

Having said that - I think alternative 2 is MUCH
better than alternative 1.

But is there some reason you discarded alternative 3:
- Keep personal information in the user directory,
but not under   system/Projects/Open ?
Specific proposal:
    When you close a project, let's say
System/Projects/Open/Foo, move the personal
settings part to   system/Projects/Closed/Foo/Personal
    Then set an attribute on the Foo folder above,
prj.publiclocation which points to the .project file.
    Then when you open a project, yousee if a
corresponding
    personal part is found in system/Projects/Closed.

    It's not required in 4.0 to have some way of
cleaning out "unused" closed personal settings
(e.g. projects which you've created and deleted
but still have the personal settings part for.) 
We could occasionally check the Closed folders,
look up the publiclocation attribute for each
project and check if the real project file exists
- and if not, offer to wipe out the personal settings.