InfoPath Dev

 Brand new to infopath and not an IT person. I am using infopath 2010 to build forms which I will publish then deploy to an iPad using Formotus. Submissions from the device will send them to a Sharepoint library. Got all that working okay so far.

 When I create my form I have to save it, which I'm doing to a shared drive. Then when I publish it, I'm putting it in the same folder where I save it, but with a filename suffix like "pub".  I saw on here somewhere that the published file has some things wrapped up in it and the saved file is more "raw" or something to that effect. But what is the difference? It appears I can open my published file in Infopath designer and edit away like usual. So why do I need to keep the original saved version? Can I just delete it then and keep publishing (and saving) back to the same file?

Thanks in advance for any help.

It's just separation of duty. The Published form is the form that a user will be filling out, so in theory it exists in some shared location, network location, SharePoint, etc.

The saved form is going to be useful for the form designer, to make changes and republish.

You could delete the saved form, but it's never a bad idea to have the XSN backed up. I tend to keep various versions of my forms, on a local folder, in case I ever notice a problem and need to roll back.