At 09.07 +0800 0-08-29, Lyndon While wrote:
>Well, that's fair enough, but the way that I've been using Hugs, I
>wanted to vary certain options from the defaults *all the time*, and
>having multiple copies of the Preferences file is awkward. Aliases
>don't seem to work, and they don't solve the whole problem anyway.
>
>The suggestion that I would make is for Hugs to
>
> - first look in {Current};
> - then look in {Hugs};
> - then use the defaults.
>
>Does this sound reasonable? Does it sound difficult?
Well, I thought it would work like that :-), or rather first reading the
global prefs, and then the local so that the latter overrides the former,
but evidently it doesn't. It's not hard to fix, but before that I suggest
you to do the following:
First start Hugs by clicking its icon; this sets the current director to
where Hugs is located. Then choose all settings you want to use as a
default, including window position and title, font, and file creator.
After that, choose "Save Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. This will
create a "Hugs Preferences" file in the directory where Hugs is.
Then make a copy of this Preferences file to every new project directory.
You can then either edit this file by hand or alter the prefs after
starting up Hugs by dropping a file from this directory onto the Hugs icon.
-- I did not have any problems using an alias, both reading from and
writing to it. The only requirement is that the alias is named exactly
"Hugs Preferences" and is in the directory from where Hugs is started
(i.e., where the file you drop onto the Hugs icon is located). But if you
use an alias, then Hugs will write to the same prefs when working from
different directories.
The behavior of aliases is otherwise something that comes with the
compiler, how it implements files on the MacOS, and not something that we
have implemented. Since the Metrowerks CodeWarrior compiler that we use
does alias tracing, it should work.
A warning: The -x preferences has changed meaning between some of the MacOS
Hugs versions. In earlier versions it was the set the heap size option,
which in later versions is -X. The reason for this change is that the team
developing the Hugs 98 kernel later made use of the option -x to mean
"explain instance resolution". So the safest thing is to make sure your
Preferences files are up to date in format, for example by making a "Save
Preferences" from the "Edit" menu after first making sure the settings are
correct.
Hans Aberg
