Sorry to interrupt all of the Platinum install noise...
 
There's a number of file location paths that are presented in the SONAR UI (Preferences/File/Folder Locations).  Some of these show up in the registry in places like HKUSER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\UserPaths or HKLM\Wow6432Node\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\ContentLocations.
 
There's a bunch of these definitions that refer to what looks like environment variables, like...
%USERMUSIC%
%PROJECTAUDIOFILES%
%PROJECTFILES%
%STEPSEQUENCES%
%TRACKICONS%
%TRACKTEMPLATES%
 
Can anyone tell me where the environment variables for SONAR are defined?

Preferences, file, folder locations :)
 
Oh and they just point to folder locations, not really environment variables as such.

They are not defined anywhere. I believe that they are used internally to refer to the configuration settings.

Is there anyone who actually knows the answer to this that would care to answer?  Are there any Cakewalk devs out there?

No, there are rarely Devs around here as I'm sure you know; this is primarily a user forum. And if a Dev were to happen along, I suspect he would likely not understand the question as-written, either, as it seems to answer itself:
 
These path variables are intended to be defined in Preferences > File > Folder Locations, and their values are stored "in the registry in places like HKUSER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\UserPaths or HKLM\Wow6432Node\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\ContentLocations."
 
So what's the question? 

brundlefly
No, there are rarely Devs around here as I'm sure you know; this is primarily a user forum. And if a Dev were to happen along, I suspect he would likely not understand the question as-written, either, as it seems to answer itself:
 
These path variables are intended to be defined in Preferences > File > Folder Locations, and their values are stored "in the registry in places like HKUSER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\UserPaths or HKLM\Wow6432Node\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\ContentLocations."
 
So what's the question? 

The question is...in some of those ContentLocation registry keys...instead of full path specifiers, there are upper case identifiers surrounded with percent signs (%) in the same way that you would use to substitute an environment variable for a literal string in a batch file.  (Maybe I'm just showing my age here by going back to the DOS days.)
 
So...%TRACKICONS% would get substituted with the contents of the TRACKICONS environment variable at runtime.  That is to say that some of the registry entries are referring to variables that are defined elsewhere.  My question is, where would I find the definitions of env vars such as TRACKICONS, et al?  Perhaps more simply put...where is the "elsewhere"?

Thanks for taking the time to clarify, Bill. I had done a quick check of User Paths, and they were all full, explicit paths. But I see now that many of the paths in Content Locations use that variable format. I suspect this is how the installer refers to those user paths when copying content to them on install.
 
Are you encountering some issue related to all of this or you're just curious or you want to customize something or...?
 
 

They are "internal" environment variables used within SONAR and to expand to their corresponding per user paths. 
I cooked these up to allow the installer to set up various default content location presets as used in the media browser. Since the installer does not know the current user this allows it to use abstract paths that get expanded to the right ones at runtime in SONAR. They are currently only used in browser presets. 
 
The current list is:
 
%USERDOCUMENTS% // my documents
%USERMUSIC% // my music
%PROJECTFILES% // project files folder
%PROJECTTEMPLATES% // project templates folder
%TRACKTEMPLATES%" // track templates folder
%TRACKICONS% // track icons folder
%PROJECTAUDIOFILES% // project audio files folder;
%VIDEOFILES% // video files folder
%PLAYLISTFILES% // playlist files folder
%STEPSEQUENCES% // step sequences folder

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
They are "internal" environment variables used within SONAR and to expand to their corresponding per user paths.

Ok...that is to say that they only exist in the context of a SONAR executable and can't be modified by normal humans?
 
And thanks for the answer by the way.  That's what I was looking for.

dantarbill
Sorry to interrupt all of the Platinum install noise...
 
There's a number of file location paths that are presented in the SONAR UI (Preferences/File/Folder Locations).  Some of these show up in the registry in places like HKUSER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\UserPaths or HKLM\Wow6432Node\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR Producer\X3\ContentLocations.
 
There's a bunch of these definitions that refer to what looks like environment variables, like...
%USERMUSIC%
%PROJECTAUDIOFILES%
%PROJECTFILES%
%STEPSEQUENCES%
%TRACKICONS%
%TRACKTEMPLATES%
 
Can anyone tell me where the environment variables for SONAR are defined?

I checked here with Sonar running and not.  No environment variables related to Sonar showed up.