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 “Fetch Preferences” in the current system folder.
The following can be adjusted in the Preferences dialog:
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 “.txt”; if it is in BinHex format Fetch will suggest “.hqx”; and if it is MacBinary II format Fetch will append “.bin” 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.
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.
Word wrap margin -- This value will be used as the word-wrapping margin if you put a file in the “Wrapped Text” format. Lines longer than this value will be broken at word boundaries into shorter lines.
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).
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.
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.
