Chris Ilias <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2013-07-28 4:57 PM, Rob wrote: >> Chris Ilias <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> about:config isn't intended to be a list of all available preferences. >> >> What is it intended for? > > I'm not confident in my understanding of it, but as I understand it... > it displays prefs that have been used (aka loaded). > For instance, if you load a fresh profile and go straight to > about:config, you won't see the pref browser.download.lastDir. Once you > download something, that pref will then appear in about:config.
My understanding of the prefs system is this: There is a table of preferences, each of them with a data type, a default value, and some flags including whether they are "hidden". Upon starting the program, first the default values are loaded, and then they are merged with prefs.js and user.js. When the program exits, it writes the current state to prefs.js, but there the prefs are 'weeded' in the sense that only values that are different from default are written to prefs.js. So, prefs.js is not a full catalog of available prefs, but only the list of values that has been set different from default (either by the user or by some automatic action within the program, including your example of downloading and saving something). about:config is a bit different. It shows all the values that are not "hidden". When a value is at its default, it shows the entry in normal font. Those are the ones what won't be written to prefs.js. When a value has been set differently, it shows in bold font here. (when it has been locked it shows in italic font) A "hidden" pref that is set to default value does not show up at all in about:config. Once it is added manually and set to a value, it shows up there (in bold font). Now, what I don't understand is why a useful pref like the one discussed in this thread is not shown in about:config. In my opinion, it should be shown in normal font, being at its default value, so the user can easily click and set it. I can understand why some experimental or debugging prefs don't show in about:config to avoid confusion, but something like the date/time format of mail messages, which can cause quite some hair-pulling and maybe should even be settable via the GUI (e.g. right-clicking on a date field), should in my opinion not be hidden in the about:config display. For me, the about:config is a first hint to what prefs exist in the program, that can conveniently be searched, and whose names can then be looked up in documentation and/or google to see what they exactly do. Hiding their existence in the about:config list makes it much more difficult to "search the internet" for them (because you will have to come up with search keywords all by yourself, which is not always easy for non-English-speakers like me). _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
