This chapter describes the standard content of a configuration (.ini) file, how to access configuration file information in your applications, and how to edit a configuration file to ensure that it is correct for your workstation or, if you are a library supervisor, for your team's workstations.

Preference settings for VAST Platform (VA Smalltalk) are currently held in many locations – the Configuration (.ini) file, the Preferences Workspace, the VA Assist Settings (in the development library), etc. Furthermore, some preferences are not exposed in any of these places; their availability seems to be only an urban legend (but, in fact, they do exist). As an additional complication to the handling (and adding) of preference settings, they are processed in a multitude of ways, some fairly standardized and some completely unique. Many of the unique preference settings handlers were created with large amounts of white-box reuse (otherwise knows as cut-and-paste).

It seems that many of these deficiencies could be solved with a Preference Setting Framework that would support a common way of processing preference settings from a common settings repository. This framework has been created and, to prove its usefulness, many of the existing .ini file preference settings are now processed using the framework.

The default configuration file is named abt.ini. You can specify a different .ini file to be used when starting an image or executable with the command line option -ini:<ini_file_name> (see Command line arguments).

The installation process should create a working configuration file for you. You can, however, edit the configuration file after you install the product. You might need to do this if you are setting up configuration files for your team, or if your network setup changes, or if you want to add preference settings specific to your applications.

To edit the file, open it in a text editor.

The following sections show the .INI file syntax , the standard content (stanzas), and the API for the Preference Settings Framework.