Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwvax!midway!zaphod!paul From: paul@zaphod.uchicago.edu (Paul Burchard) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Disappearing Preferences (2.0) Keywords: preferences, bugs Message-ID: <1991Jan8.071932.21732@midway.uchicago.edu> Date: 8 Jan 91 07:19:32 GMT Sender: burchard@math.utah.edu Distribution: usa Organization: Dept. of Mathematics, Univ. of Utah Lines: 34 I'm enjoying my new NeXTstation except for one or two annoying little things. Here's one I couldn't figure out: some of my preferences (set by the Preferences app) seem to disappear when I log out and log back in. But only some. Here is the state of things upon re-login: My choices for mouse speed, menu button enabling, and key repeat rate are no longer in effect when I log in again, nor does Preferences know anything about them. My choice of system beep, while no longer in effect, is still highlighted in Preferences(!?). And finally, despite the non-effect of these prefs, a dread -l reveals that these choices are nevertheless all recorded under the owner "NeXT1" in the defaults database. So I use Preferences to re-make my choices. What changes? Only the file ~/.NeXT/.NeXTdefaults.L changes, and these changes are not significant enough to show up in a dread -l. It seems that only some bytes in the "header" of this file are changed. Yet my choices now take effect. Sound like the ~/.NeXT/.NeXTdefaults.L file is getting damaged during logout-login? That's what I thought. No. In fact the only file changed during the logout-login process is ~/.NeXT/defaults.wmd, and these changes appear to be trivial, only permuting various pieces of the file (I don't know its syntax, so that could be significant). Either this is a bug, or preferences are never truly statically recorded, or this whole thing is too arcane to deserve the "NeXT" label. Any ideas? Similar experiences? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Burchard ``I'm still trying to learn how to count backwards from infinity...'' -----------------------------------------------------------------------------