Portlet Preference Persistence

[David Botterill]

I've read through the old mail archives and found a thread that said 
preferences were persisted in portletentityregistry.xml.  Is this really 
true?  When I store the preferences then check this file, I don't see 
the preferences.  I'd like to be able to verify that the preferences are 
actually being persisted when I "store" them.   Can anyone tell me how 
to do that?  Also, does Pluto read the persisted preferences when the 
portlet is loaded?

Thanks!
-David