7.1  The Preferences Dialog Window

Database to open

This entry field contains the default Monotone database that is to be opened automatically when Monotone Browser starts. Left click on the Browse button to display an Open Database dialog window that will help you select a database.

Auto select branch and revision

If this is ticked and Monotone Browser is launched from within a Monotone workspace then the workspace's branch and revision are selected and displayed by default in Monotone Browser. Otherwise no branch and revision are selected.

Auto select head revision

If this is ticked then whenever a branch is selected, its head revision is automatically selected as well. Otherwise the revision has to be selected manually.

	This option only works when revisions are selected by their id rather than by their tag name, i.e. Tagged is unticked in the Monotone Browser window.

Tagged lists

Controls the displaying of tagged revisions within a Revision auto-completion entry's completion list. The Limit to entry field stipulates how many items will be displayed in a completion list (if this is set to 0 then the list is unlimited). Sort chronologically and Sort by name determine whether the items are sorted by date or by their name respectively.

History size

Determines how much history is retained for ordinary combobox entry's fields via their pull down lists. This history is saved to disk so that it is available the next time you run Monotone Browser. This does not apply to Branch, Revision and Directory auto-completion entry fields as they are used to select items out of specific lists retrieved from the database.

Show suspended revisions

If this is ticked then the branches of suspended revisions are included in Branch combobox entry pull down lists. Otherwise only active branches are listed.

	Apart from the obvious use for this setting, it can be useful when there are a large number of branches in the database, as not bothering to weed out suspended branches speeds things up considerably.

Folders come first

If this is ticked then folders are displayed before any files in directory listings. Otherwise both folders and files are displayed in strict alphabetical order.

Binary threshold

This threshold is used to decide whether a file's contents are textual or binary in nature. When Monotone Browser is determining the amount of non-printable characters in a file it breaks the data down into 10KB chunks and calculates the percentage of non-printable characters in that chunk. As soon as a chunk's percentage of non-printable characters is greater than this threshold the file is considered to be binary and not textual. This process is designed for efficiency as sometimes many hundreds of files need to be scanned per second.

Search as regular expression

If this is ticked then whenever a table is searched, by entering Ctrl+F, the search term entered into the data entry field is treated as a regular expression. Otherwise the search term is treated as plain text.

Application

This entry field contains the name of the program that is to be used when comparing two files with the external helper application. Although Monotone Browser normally uses Monotone to compare files internally, there are occasions when Monotone is unable to do this (due to files being renamed or moved) or when the user feels that comparisons are better viewed in a tool dedicated to that purpose. Under these circumstances the application specified here is use. {file1} and {file2} are special tokens that are replaced with the corresponding file names.

If the Application entry field is left blank then all facilities associated with launching an external comparison tool are disabled. For example, the External Differences button on the Differences window will be permanently greyed out. The {file1} and {file2} tokens are mandatory and it would probably be a good idea to enclose them in single quotes so that if a file name contains spaces then this does not cause a problem. The file referred to by the {file1} token will be an older version to that referred to by the {file2} token.

File content/report font

This font button specifies the font to use for displaying the contents of text files. When you left click on the button you are presented with a standard Pick A Font dialog window.

	It is best that the font you pick is a non-proportional or fixed space font (where each character has the same width) as this is what most text editors use.

Hide text

If this is ticked then the text just below the tool-bar buttons on a Monotone Browser window will not be displayed. Otherwise the explanatory text will be displayed.

Coloured comparison listings

If this is ticked then revision and file comparisons are formatted using colour in order to make the differences stand out more clearly. Otherwise the comparison output is displayed as plain text in its original “unified diff” patch(1) format.

Annotation prefix 1 down to Annotation text 2

Determines the colours used when displaying text in an Annotated Listing window. As you will have observed, each block of labelled text is displayed in alternating colours in order to differentiate it from its neighbours above and below. In addition, the label, or prefix, on the left hand side of each text block is also displayed in its own colour so as to not only differentiate it from its neighbours but also from its accompanying text on the right. Therefore the colours for this window are broken down into four distinct groups, each having a foreground and background colour. When you left click on a colour button you are presented with a standard Pick A Colour dialog window.

Display internally

If this is ticked then files of that MIME type will be displayed in Monotone Browser's file viewer when selected. Otherwise just the file's MIME type is displayed. If Monotone Browser is not able to make sense of that particular MIME type then it will resort to displaying a hex dump of a file's contents instead.

Helper application

This entry field contains the name of the program that is to be used to display a file of this type when the user left clicks on a Monotone Browser window's Load Into Viewer button. {file} and {line} are special tokens that are replaced with the corresponding file name and the number of the line that is currently visible half way down the file viewer.

If the Helper application entry field is left blank then the file's default desktop application is used. Whilst both tokens are optional, if the {file} token is not present then it is automatically appended to the command in the entry field. If you do use this token then it would probably be a good idea to enclose it in single quotes so that if a file name contains spaces then this does not cause a problem.