John Doherty via mailmate wrote (at 8:39 PM on Monday, January 23, 2023): > On Mon 2023-01-23 09:12 PM MST -0700, <mailma...@coopercontent.com> wrote: > >> $ file ~/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist >>> /Users/XXXX/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist: Apple binary >>> property list >>> >>> Do not know when "old-style ASCII" plists were superseded by "Apple binary." >> >> I don't think it's a matter of when. I'm running MailMate 5925 on Mac OS >> 13.1. I think the "binary" designation is just a way to keep text programs >> from understanding the file as a text-based file. (BBEdit is one of the few >> programs that will attempt to open any file you ask it to.) > > The plot thickens. It really is a binary file: > > [daffy] $ head ~/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist | cat -v > bplist00?^PM-^W^@^A^@^B^@^C^@^D^@^E^@^F^@^G^@^H^@ ^@ > ... > > But bbedit does in fact open it just fine. I think it must be doing some > magic behind the scenes, maybe based on plutil or equivalent. The user manual > says: > > BBEdit transparently opens and displays the contents of any bz2 or > gzip-compressed files (“.bz2”, “.gz” and “.gzip” files), as well as > tarballs (“.tar” files) and binary plists (“.plist” files), both > directly and during multi-file search.
Interesting! So - my method will only work if you actually use BBEdit and not another text editor. I also occasionally use a Mac app called "Prefs Editor" to browse and edit a .plist file. It's still available at http://apps.tempel.org/PrefsEditor/. _______________________________________________ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
