Editing AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft documentation (section)

== Advanced instructions and help ==
''Further advanced help and options.''

==== Portable installs ====
''Making Portable and Networked AddOn Studio Installs''

One of the benefits of a "Portable Install" type, is the ability to run from a thumb-drive (or pen-drive or USB-drive), or from a network. This allows you to run AddOn Studio on any machine you like, 'at will'. You will still need to make sure the prerequisites are installed, those are however rolled up into the 'ISO Shell' in step 1.  So all you would need to do is to make a copy of the 'ISO Shell' available on the thumb-drive or network, and copy the 'aswow' folder to the same drive, like 'e:\apps\aswow'. If you remove the drive after AddOn Studio is fully loaded and running it will appear to still work, however it is '''strongly''' advised that you close AddOn Studio before removing the drive.  For those with 32 GB of a portable media drive, you may also be able to make an all-in-one 'portable AddOn development environment' on a drive. If you have room, copy the ISO Shell install, copy WoW and/or the Interface ToolKit, copy the AddOn Studio install. You can then tell AddOn Studio where to find WoW or the ToolKit in settings, which are saved with the 'per user' settings on that machine, and which you wont have to do again unless the drive-letter changes for the portable media.

Important: I feel compelled to mention that WoW content and files are only legally usable by those who have bought the game and/or agreed to TOS for trial account, and only for that specific matching set of WoW files, and only for your own use.  Technically the Trial version of the WoW files are different, and show up on Blizzard servers differently. That being said, however, the specific actual resource and content files are the same.

And that being said...

==== Localization ====
''Content Rollups for Localization''

:''Note: Anything described here is solely for your own personal use concerning content you already have license to use. Redistribution of Blizzard files must be in accordance with the TOS and License.''

For those who have to deal with multiple language versions of WoW, you can strip down the installs making one set of manageable content for development. A starting from nothing 'complete and proper' way to do this is to either 1) obtain each language ToolKit and manually merge, or 2) obtain multiple language WoW installs. One way to obtain the multiple language installs, in addition to the WoW languages you already have in your own WoW install, is to go and download additional trial versions in other languages. This is important for testing with the two non-western sets of languages: character based like Asian languages, and right-to-left languages like Arabic. With the Panda versions of WoW this for many will start becoming a support issue.  Getting there is way harder than it should be, and how to get there goes like this...

# For downloading extremely foreign language versions of the trial, you will have to be crafty in navigating foreign language web pages and creating logins. In doing this you have the option of downloading the trial version with 'additional' languages, just like the U.S. download pages have the option of downloading with es-MX or not.  Each of downloads will also contain a fallback version of English UI content.  I would suggest getting the extra language versions.
# Once you have downloaded, say, the Taiwanese with extra languages support, can install to "wowTw" folder instead of 'wow' or 'world of warcraft' to keep them separate. After the install, wait until the WoW Loader has completely finished downloading. Start that WoW, log in, accept the TOS, then go back to the loader. In the loader, specify each of the alternate languages, and let the Loader again download the whole language. Start the loader once again and make sure there's nothing else for the loader to give you. Once you have installed, this copy of WoW will mark itself in your windows registry as "the current version of wow". AddOn Studio by default will pick that install of WoW, which you can change in the AddOn Studio settings. 
# The only relevant portion of the install theoretically for AddOn dev is in the 'Data' folder. Inside that folder are folders that look like 'enTW' and 'zhTW'. Those are the language specific portions of WoW and are also the UI specific portions in total. The WoW UI content is always language specific, even if there are redundancies between them. In this case 'enTW' is English localized for Taiwan, and 'zhTW' is technically Chinese localized for Taiwan even though its really kind of its own language, and just to give you some context and perspective. The 'WTF' folder in the base WoW install folder can also be significant if you are trying to ensure or test variables. AddOn Studio will use the currently set WoW language by default, which is stored in the WTF folder in Config.wtf. Which language AddOn Studio uses can also be changed in the AddOn Studio settings.