3.1 Setting Preferences

The Boa Constructor tool provides a number of features which can be customised by you. These are customised through files. The syntax of these files is either completely or partially in the Python language. Be careful when editing these files. If you put syntax errors into these files, Boa Constructor will not load. The files are straight forward. The following are the files:

Explorer Configuration

The files 'Explorer.msw.cfg' and 'Explorer.gtk.cfg' are used to configure the Editor Explorer window on Windows and Unix respectively. There are a number of items which can be configured in this file.

The following is an example of an Explorer configuration file from a windows installation.

        [explorer]
        filesystem : ['A:\\', 'C:\\', 'D:\\']
        bookmarks : {'Root': 'C:\\', 'Development': 'D:\\dev'}
        defaultbookmark : Root
        zope : {'Localhost': 
         {'host': '127.0.0.1', 
          'httpport': 8080, 
          'ftpport': 8021, 
          'username': '', 
          'passwd': '', 
          'path': '/', 
          'name': '',
          'localpath': ''} }

Preferences

The preferences.py file contains general preferences. This file is accessible from the Palette toolbar with the following icon . The following are items which can be configured through this file.

Windowing System Preferences

The files PrefsMSW.py and PrefsGTK.py are the window system specific preference files. These files are provided as a convenience. The values for some settings, e.g. Paths, are significantly different between UNIX and Windows. These files are imported by Preferences.py depending on the platform. The following items are configured in these files: