Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!gatech!ncsuvx!ece-csc!rss
From: rss@ece-csc.UUCP (Ralph Scherp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: calling all gurus
Message-ID: <3482@ece-csc.UUCP>
Date: 7 Apr 88 00:56:11 GMT
References: <8804051628.AA27845@decwrl.dec.com>
Reply-To: rss@ece-csc.UUCP (Ralph Scherp)
Organization: North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
Lines: 50

In article <8804051628.AA27845@decwrl.dec.com> kruger@16bits.dec.comh writes:
>I am just starting to get involved with machine specifics of the Amiga, and
>also suffer from extreme lack of time. However, the system is screaming for
>a program that will set preferences from a file. ie:
>
>setpref mypreferences
>setpref yourpreferences
>
> ... For that matter, is the format of system-config
>even documented anywhere? If not, could anyone from CATS post it?
>
>Thanks!
>dov


Sure, I've done this.  It's quite simple.  I wanted the same capability
to reset preferences because I have a hard drive, but the preferences which
show up on the system are those sitting in df0: rather than on dh0:
(after I've reassigned DEVS: to DH0); so I put together a simple (really!)
program which loads in the preferences from the disk file (which is
devs:system-configuration) and makes them the current preferences.

The file "devs:system-configuration" is just an exact copy of the 
"Preferences" structure defined in intuition/intuition.h (I think)
so all you have to do to reset preferences is:

    open the intuition library
       IntuitionBase = OpenLibrary("intuition.library",0);
    open the disk file devs:system-configuration (or your substitute file)
       fd = open("Devs:System-configuration",O_RDONLY,0);
    read the data into a struct Preferences
       read(fd,&pref,sizeof(pref)); 
           (where "pref" is "struct Preference pref")
    issue a SetPrefs call (this is what makes it all work)
           SetPrefs(&pref,sizeof(pref),TRUE);
    close the library & file & exit.

The program I wrote is very simple at present since I only intended it
to fix preferences to reflect my hard drive configuration rather than
that on my floppy, but it works.  If you'd like, I'll mail you a copy
or if there's enough interest I'll post it.

I was thinking of enhancing the program to allow you to actually modify
current preferences settings; i.e., I was considering writing a CLI
equivalent to the existing Preferences program.  How about it folks?
Is there any interest in this?  If so, I'll do it; else I'm not gonna
bother.  Maybe someone out there already has one?

            Hope this helps,
             Mark Lanzo
            (posting thru a friend's account)