Re: When are preferences and where saved ?

Thomas Stein wrote:
> I wonder why my current GUI preferences (in WinXP) not permanently saved.
> As an example I set in Capture->Interface->XXXIF->Prepare->Hide capture
> info dialog
>
> When I exit Ethereal and re-open it then the check before this option is
> cleared again.
> Why ?

Part of the problem is that some of the "preferences" are true preferences
- i.e., options you're likely to change only once, to match what you
prefer - while others, especially in the set of protocol preferences, are
choices that would be set differently for different capture files.

Therefore, you currently have to use the "Save" button in the preferences
dialog box to get the preferences saved.

We should, at least for the protocol preferences, have default values
(which would be edited with the "Preferences" dialog box, and saved
automatically when you click "OK", along with all of the other
preferences), and current values (which would be edited with a different
dialog box, and wouldn't be saved when you click "OK", although we *might*
offer a "Save as defaults" option for that dialog box).

It might be that some of the protocol preferences are really preferences
rather than per-capture-file settings, so there would only be the values
edited with the "Preference" dialog boxes, and only the per-capture-file
ones would be editable with the other dialog box.

(Then again, some might be "per-conversation", in which case we need a new
mechanism for them....)

> On the other side Ethereal seems to work fine. Only my settings are not
> stored permanently.

As indicated above, unfortunately, you have to save them explicitly in
order to store them permanently.

> By the way:
> Is there a way to move all files (if they would exist) from
> %APPDATA%\Ethereal\*
> to a new folder %ETHEREAL%\mysettings  ?

You could move them from the command line or Windows Explorer - but
Ethereal would ignore them if you did.

I.e., there's no way to change where Ethereal looks for your settings, if
that's what you're really asking about.  If they're in the directory in
which Ethereal was installed, they wouldn't be *your* settings, in any
case - *your* settings would have to be in one of your directories, not in
a global application directory.

If you want to make your settings the *global default* settings, you'd
save them and then copy %APPDATA%\Ethereal\preferences to
%ETHEREAL%\ethereal.conf.