Re: Digest Number 901

[Tom Robinson]

>> This brings to mind a feature I have long desired >> from ALL applicaions: >> Print the preferences for reference >> and for each preference the default value >> and the user's value (if different) >> >> > Or even better save them as a text file (XML maybe?) But most OS X apps DO save their preferences in XML format... That's what the plist extension is in your ~/Library/Preferences folder. If you have Property List Editor from the Developer tools installed you can just double-click on com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter.plist to see all the preferences. If you're happy with the command line you can issue something like: defaults read com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter There's more documentation on the web for plist files and these options, so I won't go into more detail. Unfortunately GraphicConverter uses a lot of generic descriptions ('string x'), and what looks like multiple preferences in one field ('general'), so this exercise isn't as edifying as some other plist files.

[Gnarlodious]

Entity Tom Robinson spoke thus: >> Or even better save them as a text file (XML maybe?) > > But most OS X apps DO save their preferences in XML format... Not necessarily, as of 10.4 "*.plist" files are in a binary format for faster performance. This is the case for Apple apps but not (yet) others. The slowdown Thorsten spoke of would probably be eliminated in 10.4's binary system. Take a look at the iTunes database file, which has been in binary format for years, it is incredibly fast regardless of how many thousands of songs you have in it. It will give you some idea of where Apple is headed with .plist files. There is a Terminal command in 10.4 for converting binary .plist files to plain text and back again, I forget what it is because I haven't played with it. The idea when scripting a binary preference file is to convert it to text, perform the scripted change, then convert it back to binary to save it. This guarantees fast performance. -- Gnarlie