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Editing preference settings

The main task of PrefEdit is to give users the possibility to view the full set of preference settings for a given application and to make changes to the settings when necessary. To open the settings of a preference domain, double-click the related line in the table of the domain overview window, or use the Find in Preferences feature to double-click a line of the search results. A window displaying all current settings of the selected domain will open. You can open as many windows for different domains as you like.

The table in the lower half of the window lists all preference settings currently stored for that domain in the preferences database. The column Property Key displays the name of each setting, Value its current value, and Type the data type for that value. A checkmark in the column MCX indicates that the respective setting is currently under control of the Managed Client feature of Mac OS X, so it may be automatically overwritten even if you temporarily change its value. In case an info (i) icon is being displayed in the column Manifest, a detailed description of that preference setting is available, because the vendor of the selected application has provided a preference manifest file.

If you have permission to do so, you can change any aspect of a preference setting. Just click on key, type or value to edit the contents of those fields. If you don't have write permission, the settings will be displayed in grey and cannot be modified. Nested entries like dictionaries or arrays can be opened by clicking on the disclosure triangles displayed in front of the respective lines.

• When entering numbers or dates as values for the types Number or Date, respectively, PrefEdit will automatically respect your personal preferences to format those entries in accordance with the rules of your current language selection. So even if you are modifying a date entry of a foreign application which writes dates with the year specification at first position, for example, you can (and should) enter the date following the guidelines of your own preferred language. This rule does not apply when using numbers or dates within values of the type String, however. In that case, the application owning the preference domain defines how it will interpret the entered texts. The next section contains additional notes regarding the entry of dates.
• Values of the type Data must be specified as sequence of bytes, written as 2-digit hexadecimal numbers, separated by single spaces and enclosed in angle brackets. Example: The three bytes with the decimal values 2, 129 and 254 must be entered as <02 A1 FE>.
• Remember that property keys of dictionaries must be unique. PrefEdit will automatically warn you if you are trying to use two identical keys in the same dictionary.
• The property key of a preference setting is the name this setting is being identified with within its domain. So if you change (rename) a key, you will in fact be deleting that setting, inserting a new one with the same value under a different name.

You can add and remove settings without limitation. Removing a setting is equivalent to resetting it to factory defaults. The next time the application owning this preference domain is started, it will notice that the setting is missing and will use its own predefined default value for it.

• To remove a preference setting or an item of a nested structure, select the item in the table, then press the button Remove Item in the toolbar of the window. You can also the menu item Edit > Delete.
• To add a preference setting or an item of a nested structure, ensure the correct nesting level is selected in the table and press the Add button in the toolbar of the window. You can alternatively select the menu item Edit > Add entry or press ⌘++. PrefEdit automatically tries to “guess” if you like to add an item at the same nesting level or at a deeper level in the hierarchy. This will be reflected in the toolbar which will switch between Add Item and Add Child, respectively.
• You can use the editing features Cut (⌘+X), Copy (⌘+C) and Paste (⌘+V) on any entry. This allows you to easily transfer one entry or a whole nested structure from one position to another. When pasting an entry, PrefEdit will use the same strategy to decide whether to add the item at the same level or as child, as discussed in the previous item.
• When editing an array, you can reorder items by dragging them around with the mouse.

If a clear-text description of a preference setting is available via a preference manifest, click on the info icon (i) in the Manifest column to open an additional panel. The panel will display all available detail information about this setting, using your preferred language if possible.

All changes you make in a preference domain will not take effect immediately. PrefEdit handles them as being pending, simulating a document file although PrefEdit in this case is not working with preference files but with the Mac OS X preference subsystem.

• To apply all changes you have made to the preferences domain, click the button Apply in the lower right corner or press the key combination ⌘+S.
• To discard all changes and return to the previous state of the in-memory copy of the preferences database for this domain, click the button Revert.

After you have made changes to a domain, you may like to verify whether your changes will take effect as expected. To make this easy, PrefEdit can launch the application the domain is associated with. Just press the button Launch in the toolbar of the window.

The Launch button won't be available if the preferences domain is not associated with an application running on the graphical user interface of Mac OS X.

Working with date entries

Date specifications used by Mac OS X are based on sophisticated technologies which ensure that the specifications can be used and transferred universally, i.e. independent of language, notational conventions, calendar systems, and time zones. For this reason, Mac OS X always stores a time and time zone specification together with each date, even if the application using this date might interpret it as a “day specifier” only.

PrefEdit lets you choose how date entries should be presented:

• The language, notation and calendar system preferred by the user is automatically taken from the section Language & Text > Formats > Dates / Times in System Preferences.
• The option if date entries should be handled as plain dates or dates including wall clock time, can be set by a preference setting within PrefEdit itself.

You can change this preference settings as follows:

1. Select the menu item PrefEdit > Preferences… or press ⌘+,.
2. In the panel Preferences, choose between one the settings at Show and enter date entries as.

The setting becomes effective both for the display and the entry of dates within PrefEdit. When you have chosen the setting to include the time specifications for dates, dates must be entered with wall clock time afterwards. The entered time represents the local time in your current time zone.

This setting does not influence how Mac OS X stores date entries internally. Omitting the time during date entry does not save any memory or storage space. If omitting time specifications, date entries will be interpreted as time specifications of midnight in the local time zone, e.g. March 26, 2009 is actually represented as March 26, 2009, 00:00:00 local time, and will be saved converted for the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) time zone. It is up to the applications processing a date entry what accuracy should be assumed when interpreting that point in time.

Working with the search path hierarchy

The preferences window can be operated in two different modes. By default, it will display only the intersection of user-, computer- and application-oriented domains you had selected. You can use the radio buttons at the top of the window to switch to a different display mode. After selecting the item Display search path hierarchy effective for current user session, PrefEdit will compute the full search path for preference settings in your user environment, merging all domains which take effect. PrefEdit hereby simulates the view on the preferences database exactly as the application associated with the selected domain “sees” it.

You have to apply or discard all pending changes to the domain before switching display modes. When displaying the full search path, the usually invisible entries of the built-in registration domain become visible, too.

When viewing the settings for the full search path, the basic functions of the preferences window will work as before. However, several additional features are available in this mode:

Because it is no longer obvious from which part of the preferences database a certain entry is originating from, you can let PrefEdit visualize the source of each setting: Ensure that the preferences window is in the front and keep the mouse cursor at least one second in the same position over an entry in the column Property Key. A Mac OS X tooltip will appear, showing you from which domain intersection this setting is coming from.

If an entry is displayed with a light-grey background, this will indicate that multiple settings with the same name have been found in the preferences database and Mac OS X had to apply its search path priority rules to find out which value will take effect. When using the disclosure triangle to expand the entry, PrefEdit will display exactly which settings have been overriden, and which one is currently in effect.

Note that you can still fully edit all settings in this display mode as long as they aren't read-only (grey).

When working with the search path hierarchy, it is important to keep in mind that many areas of the preferences database are now being displayed in one single window. In particular, the system-wide settings for all users and the global settings for all applications are accessible. If you change a setting in the global domain, this will have an effect on all applications, not only on the application whose domain is shown in the window title.

It is also possible to add a preference setting with the same name as an already existing setting, when PrefEdit has detected that multiple domain intersections play a role for the evaluation of that setting already. In this case, PrefEdit will automatically analyze your current user permissions and the overridden entries available in the database to ask you at which position in the search path hierarchy you like to insert the new setting. By intention, this is not possible for settings which only exist once in the search path, i.e. in a single domain intersection (not having a grey background).

To avoid unwanted side effects, the features for cut/copy/paste and drag-and-drop cannot be used while displaying the search path hierarchy.

Search for settings in the selected preference domain

PrefEdit will display a standard Mac OS X Find panel, when you select the menu item Edit > Find > Find… or press the key combination ⌘+F. This panel can be used to search for keys, values or both. The search operation will begin one position after the item you have currently selected in the preferences window. If the option Wrap around is switched on, PrefEdit will not stop the search at the end of the list of settings, but continue the search jumping back to the first entry.

PrefEdit is fully compliant with Mac OS X's design rules for search operations:

• The key combination ⌘+G will find the next occurrence of the already entered search text, continuing the search in forward direction.
• The key combination ⌘+⇧+G will do the same in reverse direction, finding the previous occurrence.
• The key combination ⌘+E will cause your current text selection to become the text to search for.
• The key combination ⌘+J forces the active interface element to jump to the current selection, making sure the selected item becomes visible.

To search for settings in all preference domains, use the feature Find in Preferences instead.