On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Sherm Pendley wrote:
> On Apr 18, 2006, at 2:30 PM, Brian McKee wrote:
>
> > Start Terminal.app and check under preferences (apple-,)
> > If you don't see it there, quit Terminal, backup and delete
> > ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist
>
> It's not a great idea to manipulate preference files directly. Their
> location, filename, format, etc. are considered an implementation
> detail that's subject to change without notice. Apple has already made
> at least two changes, from old-style plists to XML-based plists, and
> then from that to a binary file format.
>
> The Apple-recommended way to deal with the user defaults database from
> a shell prompt is to use the "defaults" tool, like this:
>
> defaults delete com.apple.Terminal
>
> Naturally, there are both Cocoa and Carbon APIs to do this
> programatically also.
All of which is true.
That said, I still find this easier & potentially safer:
mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist{,.MOVED}
The main benefit being that if this doesn't actually solve the problem,
you can trivially reverse the change with a
mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist{.MOVED,}
(And all that said, renaming preference files and deleting caches under
your ~/Library/Caches tree are both common diagnostic tricks when things
aren't working. In most cases, zapping files in either of these trees
shouldn't cause any problems, since if the needed files are missing, the
applications will regenerate a known-good version of the preference or
cache file -- the same way it did the first time you used them. But
then, at a glance, it doesn't look like Terminal uses caches, so that
wouldn't apply here, but the broader point still stands -- preferences
and caches are generally easy & safe to rename or remove when trying to
diagnose software problems.)
--
Chris Devers
who *ahem* does this sort of thing for people for a living :-)
