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This chapter explains the many user preferences which are available in TextSpresso. TextSpresso is highly customizable with preferences for everything from look and feel to thread timing. Using the Application Preferences window you can specify how TextSpresso should start up, if it should automatically save documents, what cursors it should use, and much more.
You may wish to simply browse the Application Preferences window by selecting Preferences... from the Edit menu. Experienced Macintosh users will likely understand what most of the preferences are for and how to use them. This chapter explains each preference in detail as a reference.
Almost all of TextSpresso's preferences are accessible via the Application Preferences window. You can open this window by selecting Preferences... from the Edit menu.
At the top of the Application Preferences window there is a popup menu which allows you to select the category of preferences you wish to edit. There are also two buttons at the bottom of the window, Cancel and Save. When you are finished editing your preferences, click Save to make the changes permanent and close the window. If you don't want to save your new preferences, click Cancel.
The rest of the sections in this chapter correspond the categories of preferences in the Application Preferences window. Open the window and select the category you are reading about to set the various options.
TextSpresso can be set to automatically save open documents at regular intervals, when closing, and when you are switching to another application. This provides a high level of document security, insuring that your work is saved to your hard disk even if your forget to save it.
To turn Auto Save on you must check the check box marked Auto Save. This box turns on or off all Auto Save options. It must be checked for the following options to work. You can temporarily turn Auto Save on or off for a session by selecting the command Auto Save? from the File menu. If checked, Auto Save is on. If not checked, it is off.
Once you've turned Auto Save on you enter the time between saves, in minutes, into the text field below the Auto Save check box.
A second text field is below the first one, the "idle seconds" field. "Idle seconds" are seconds when you aren't doing anything in TextSpresso. By setting this field to something other than 0 you can avoid the situation where TextSpresso interrupts your work with an Auto Save. For instance, say TextSpresso is set to save open documents every 5 minutes and to wait for 5 idle seconds before saving. Every 5 minutes TextSpresso takes a look at what's happening on the computer. If you are busy typing or doing something else in TextSpresso, TextSpresso will wait to perform the Auto Save. It will keep watching until you haven't done anything for 5 seconds, then it will take the opportunity to perform an Auto Save.
There are three additional check boxes below these fields. Normally when you close a document TextSpresso asks you if you would like to save changes to the document like any Macintosh application. If you check the "Auto save when closing?" check box, TextSpresso will save the document instead of asking. Be careful with this option. Normally Macintosh users expect to be asked about saving a document. You might make a mistake and click the close box expecting that TextSpresso will give you a chance to discard the mistake you made. But if this option is turned on, TextSpresso will save instead.
If you check the "Auto save on suspension?" check box, TextSpresso will perform an Auto Save whenever you switch to another application. This insures that your latest changes are saved should another application cause your Macintosh to crash.
If you check the "Auto save in background?" check box, TextSpresso will Auto Save documents even if it's in the background. Normally TextSpresso assumes that no changes will be made to open documents while it's sitting in the background, since the user is working with a different application. But this may not be true if you routinely run complex filters on very long documents and let TextSpresso work in the background.
Note that Auto Save only saves documents which have corresponding disk files (i.e. they've already been saved by the user once). New documents which have never been saved are skipped during an Auto Save. Also note that Auto Save skips over any documents which have filters running on them at the moment of the Auto Save.
Every Macintosh file has both a creator type and a file type. These are four letter identifiers which are used by Mac OS and Macintosh applications to determine the type of data a file contains and the file's owner. When you double-click a file in the Finder, Mac OS uses the creator type to figure out what application should open the file.
In the upper right hand corner of TextSpresso's document window is a small text field and a popup menu. This field displays the creator type of the document, and the popup menu lists common Macintosh creator types. You can change the creator type of any file you open in TextSpresso either by editing the field directly or by selecting a creator type from the popup menu. This will change the application which opens the file whenever it is double-clicked.
You can control what creator types appear in the popup menu using the Creator Types category of the Application Preferences window. When you switch to this category you will see all of the creator types currently stored in a scrolling list. You can edit them using the instructions below.
Manually Adding A Creator
Automatically Adding A Creator
Editing A Creator
Deleting Creators
Changing The Order: simply drag and drop the creator types to rearrange their order of appearance.
Cursor Options lets you specify what "busy cursor" you see when TextSpresso is busy filtering a document. Of course TextSpresso is multi-threaded, so this only applies when the cursor is over a busy document window. As soon as you move the cursor to the menu bar, or to a window which is not busy, it returns to a pointer so that you can work.
Simply select the busy cursor you would like to see from the listed choices. When you click on a busy cursor you get to see that cursor for a few seconds. The Color Cursors option lets you decided whether or not TextSpresso should display color busy cursors (checked) or the standard B&W busy cursors (unchecked). If you're using a B&W monitor the B&W cursors are displayed even if this is checked. The only real reason to uncheck this option is if you have a separate, system-wide busy cursor control panel which doesn't work right when this option is on.
The Use Busy Cursors option lets you turn busy cursors off if you have a separate, system-wide busy cursor control panel which doesn't work right with TextSpresso's busy cursors.
And finally, the Random option, when checked, causes TextSpresso to randomly choose a busy cursor whenever it needs to display one.
The options in the General Options category are described below.
Hot Activation is a feature which allows you to bring TextSpresso to front by simply moving your mouse to a Hot Corner or typing a Hot Key combination.
You set up Hot Filter in the Preferences window. To set up Hot Filter, do the following:
Using the Hot Activation feature is very easy. First make sure you've followed the above instructions to set up the Hot Activation feature. Then in another application do the following:
TextSpresso will jump to the front. You may want to read Hot Filter: Special Notes for notes on choosing and using Hot Keys.
Please see the Hot Filter chapter.
The options in the Startup Options category are described below.
TextSpresso is a multithreaded application. This means that it can do more than one thing at a time. Specifically, TextSpresso can apply more than one filter across more than one document while performing other commands. TextSpresso is capable of doing this even on versions of Mac OS without the Thread Manager.
TextSpresso gives you full control over how it threads its operations. This allows you to optimize TextSpresso's performance for your computer and work environment. You should only edit these preferences if you, after reading this section, fully understand what they do and how they will affect TextSpresso's performance. Incorrectly setting them can cause TextSpresso to run slowly or "lock up" your computer. If TextSpresso runs fine as is for you then there's no reason to edit these.
Multithreading
Multithreading is on by default. The first option available to you is the ability to turn multithreading off. Turning multithreading off will actually allow TextSpresso's filters to run at their fastest possible speed because they won't have to constantly check the clock to see if they need to relinquish control. However, if you turn multithreading off TextSpresso will "lock up" while it is applying a filter. You won't be able to do anything else in TextSpresso or in any other application. You won't even be able to pause or stop the running filter. And background applications will not get any time to do their work. TextSpresso's filters are optimized for speed any way, and they're very fast even when threaded. It is recommended that you leave multithreading on. Leaving it on leaves you in control and allows you to do whatever you want while filters are applied. Typically filters are applied in a fraction of a second in any case, but for those rare times when they take a while (very large files and/or batch processing) you will want to retain control of your computer.
Thread Slicing
Your next options are the foreground and background thread slicing. These fields specify the maximum amount of time a TextSpresso filter can spend processing text before it gives control back to the application. The values are specified in 1/60th's of a second. Higher values mean TextSpresso spends more time filtering text and filters complete faster. But they also mean that other tasks get less time to do their work. With higher values things like typing and menu commands in TextSpresso may become sluggish. Lower values mean TextSpresso spends less time filtering text and filters take longer overall to complete. But they also mean that other tasks will have more time to do their work. Typing and menu commands will remain quick and responsive.
There are separate values for when TextSpresso is the front application (foreground) and when it is in the background.
If you want TextSpresso filters to execute more quickly, increase the values in these fields. If TextSpresso or your computer feels sluggish when TextSpresso is filtering and you want it to be more responsive, decrease the values in these fields.
Do Not Thread If...
TextSpresso can be set to avoid threading a filter if the text size is below a specified amount. Why would you want to do this? Generally speaking filters are applied so quickly to small amounts of text (i.e. 32K) that it makes more sense to simply not thread them. Say a filter, applied to 32K of text, takes 10/60th of a second to complete when threaded, but only 5/60th when not threaded. In both cases the filter will have finished before your thread slicing limit was reached (unless you set it really low), so it didn't need to be threaded any way. And when not threaded it saves 5/60th of a second for other tasks.
Users with faster Macs can afford to increase this threshold without losing any responsiveness.
Sleep Times
When a Macintosh application gives time to the OS and other applications it is said to be "sleeping". The sleep time is the maximum amount of time TextSpresso is willing to give to other applications. Like with the thread slicing, there are separate foreground and background sleep times. And they are specified in 1/60th's of a second.
The higher the sleep values, the more time TextSpresso is willing to give to other applications. But, this means that TextSpresso will have less time to do its work and may take longer to finish filters and other tasks. The lower the sleep values, the faster TextSpresso runs, but then other applications have less time and may seem sluggish or unresponsive.
As with all settings in this category, the defaults will be fine for most users. But advanced users may wish to play with the settings to try and optimize their system.
What about Mac OS X?
Mac OS X will handle multitasking and multithreading differently from Mac OS 7.x/8.x. Although we have not yet produced a Mac OS X optimized version of TextSpresso, when we do you basically will no longer need these options. Mac OS X will automatically optimized the task slicing of all applications on the fly and as conditions change.
There are a few preferences which are set implicitly as you use TextSpresso. The size and position of the various palettes, for instance, are preferences which are set simply by moving and resizing the palettes. The default size, position, and font of the document window is set when you select Make Default Editor from the Text menu. Also, the default Page Setup information is stored when there are no documents open and you select Page Setup... from the File menu.