The Preferences menu item brings up a dialog that allows you to configure the way Fetch operates. The settings made in this dialog are saved in a file called ﾒFetch Preferencesﾓ in the current system folder.
The following can be adjusted in the Preferences dialog:
General Preferences:
Default password -- The text entered here will be used as your password whenever you connect as ﾒanonymous.ﾓ It is customary to supply your e-mail address in this case, so we recommend that you enter your e-mail address here.
Display server messages -- Some FTP servers display special information in the client-server dialog, such as hours of operation, use restrictions, and information about the files on the server. If this box is checked Fetch will display these messages in a separate window; otherwise they can be viewed by examining the Fetch Transcript window.
Keep connection active -- If this box is checked Fetch will regularly send commands to the remote computer. Some computers terminate connections after a certain period of idleness (usually five to fifteen minutes), and having Fetch send commands regularly evades this policy. Note that it is very impolite to keep a connection open to a public-access FTP server for a long period; many computers limit the total number of connections and your connection may prevent others from using the service.
Show file sizes and dates -- If this box is checked Fetch will attempt to display file sizes and dates-last-modified in the file list. This is usually only possible if the remote host is a Unixｪ machine or a Macintosh running Peter Lewisﾕs FTPd server. The file names, sizes, and dates will all be displayed in Geneva 9, in order to fit longer names in the given space. If a name is truncated to make room for the size and date you can select it to show only the name.
Downloading Preferences:
Download folder -- If this box is checked you will be prompted to choose a folder for saving downloaded files. From that point on Fetch will save downloaded files in the download folder without any further prompting. To disable this feature uncheck the download folder checkbox.
Edit text files with -- This pop-up menu allows you to choose which editor's icon will be put on text files retrieved by Fetch. Thus you can have your favorite editor start up when you double-click on the icon of the retrieved file. If your favorite editor is not found in the menu please send an electronic note to Fetch@dartmouth.edu (or edit Fetch's TXTs resource with ResEdit).
Default binary type/creator -- The type/creator codes entered here will be used for raw binary files that do not have a type/creator assigned in the Suffix Mapping dialog. This can be useful if you are downloading many binary files that do not have a common suffix.
Uploading Preferences:
Add file format suffixes -- If this box is checked Fetch will add suffixes to the suggested names of files put on the remote computer. So if the file is being sent in Text format Fetch will suggest a suffix of ﾒ.txtﾓ; if it is in BinHex format Fetch will suggest ﾒ.hqxﾓ; and if it is MacBinary II format Fetch will append ﾒ.binﾓ to the suggested name. These suffixes are useful when Fetch tries to determine the type of a file when it comes time to retrieve it, and so this box it checked by default. You may want to uncheck it if the system you are connected to requires very short file names.
Word wrap margin -- This value will be used as the word-wrapping margin if you put a file in the ﾒWrapped Textﾓ format. Lines longer than this value will be broken at word boundaries into shorter lines.
Format Preferences:
Recognize and Interpret -- These checkboxes determine whether Fetch will automatically recognize and convert downloaded files in the given formats (StuffIt!, BinHex4, MacHost, MacBinary I & II, and AppleSingle). If you have trouble downloading a file in one of these formats you may want to turn off the conversion and convert the file with another tool.
Miscellaneous Preferences:
Refresh file lists older than n minutes -- Fetch remembers file lists from directories you have visited. This value controls how long such a list will be remembered. If you would like to have quicker performance you can increase the value; if you want to make sure that the displayed file list is up to date you can choose a smaller value.
Use ﾒTYPE Iﾓ to retrieve binary files -- Check this box if you want Fetch to use the ﾒTYPE Iﾓ format for binary transfers; this is necessary for proper operation with some IBM mainframe servers, but can cause problems with machines that do not use 8-bit bytes (such as TOPS-20 systems).
Omit file names beginning with a period -- Check this box if you do not want Fetch to display names that begin with a period in its file list. This can reduce the clutter when connecting to Unix accounts.
Translate ISO characters -- Check this box if you would like Fetch to translate 8-bit ISO characters in text files and file listings to the Mac equivalents, using the 'taBL' resources in Fetch.
Show signon dialog at startup -- Check this box if you would like Fetch to automatically open the signon dialog box when Fetch is started.
