Power User Prefs
From the beginning I wrote Z-Write with a user-editable Preferences system. If you go to the Preferences Folder and open the Z-Write Prefs file, you’ll see it’s an ordinary text document. (It even has a BBEdit creator type.)

Prefs are stored in the following manor, one pref per line:

   #directivecode thepreferencesetting

For example, the following are valid prefs:

   #rememberpath Z-Write:Z-Write ƒ:The Great American Novel
   #clock true
   #smartquotes true
   #buttonbar true
   #statswindowpos 619,108,350,100

If you want to, you can just edit these by hand instead of using the Preferences dialog box. Most of these are just text. A few, however, are more complicated. For instance, glossary items are stored in the Prefs file in this above manner -- but since the user could include several paragraphs of information in a glossary item, and carriage returns are not allowed within a pref setting (as that signals the end of that pref setting), I have to convert the returns to a character the user can’t type in, such as a tab or ASCII character zero. In BBEdit these characters show up as red upside questionmarks, making it easy to copy and paste them, if you wish to edit such items manually.

Because adding even a single item to the Preference dialog box can take a great deal of time (like several hours of tweaking and moving), I cannot add every preference option under the sun, especially those that only appeal to small group of users. However, adding a preference to the actual program is easy (depending on the feature) -- hence the concept of Power User Prefs, i.e. pref settings that don’t have an interface. If you want to modify these, you’ll have to edit them by hand.

I plan on adding more of these (please send me your suggestions of how you’d like to be able to customize Z-Write). Documented below are the Power User Prefs supported by Z-Write 1.1.

#nosplashscreen true

This option turns off the splash screen when Z-Write launches. It’s false by default, and it doesn’t work if you’re not registered.

#rtfcreator MSWD

By default Z-Write uses MS-Word as the creator type for RTF documents, but just in case someone prefers something else, they can type the 4-character creator code here. NOTE: Z-Write does no checking to make sure you’ve used a valid creator type -- if you put in something bad, who knows what will happen.

#sectiondividertext Section: <name><r>

This is a powerful command. I put this in for those using foreign languages who want to control how Z-Write separates Sections during printing and exporting. Whatever text is placed to the right of the preference directive is used to separate the Sections. The default is the above.

There are two special tags that can be used within the sectiondividertext setting. <name> is replaced with the actual name of the Section and <r> is replaced with a carriage return. You can use more than one of these to separate your Sections however you’d like. For instance:

     #sectiondividertext <r><r>----- <name> -----<r><r>

This would put in two blank lines, some hyphens, the name of the Section, more hyphens, and two blank lines.

I had a few people ask that there be no text between Sections when they are combined. Easily done. I recommend at least a carriage return, but you can put whatever you want there:

    #sectiondividertext <r>

The above puts a blank line between Sections when they are combined.

#fontmenufont Geneva

This option lets you set the font the Button Bar Font menu appears in. It is normally set to Geneva, but this option was added for compatibility with foreign language systems (i.e. Japanese).

#sectionlistfont Monaco, 14

This controls the font and text size of the Section List. The default is Geneva 9, but that might be small for some folks, so now you can enlarge it.

IMPORTANT POWER USER PREFS NOTE:
Z-Write loads the prefs on launch. Thus Z-Write must not be active when you make changes to the Prefs file, because it will write a new prefs file when it quits, thus erasing any changes you made. (The prefs file is loaded and written from scratch each time Z-Write is launched and quit. Thus if you put in a bad or unknown pref, it will only be there for one launch.)

Also be aware that there is very little error-checking on these prefs: they are assumed to be correct. If you put in invalid information, expect Z-Write to behave strangely, or even crash on launch. Pretty much any problem you cause can be fixed by simply deleting the Prefs file. Make a backup copy of the existing pref file before you begin, and if you experience problems, simply restore the original.