Mac: Preferences greyed out
24 Nov 2005 5:54:57 UTC
Topic 190215
(moderation:
How am I to set my preferences in BOINC manager? The 'preferences' menu item is greyed out in my installation, so I can't allocate disk space or set preferences for when work is done.
Thanks
Benet
Mac: Preferences greyed out
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Most of the preferences are set on the web site(s). Set the global preferences at one site and they will propagate to all the others you are attached to. The project specific preferences must be set at each project site.
BOINC WIKI
BOINCing since 2002/12/8
RE: The 'preferences' menu
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The only "preferences" available at the local end are now under Tools/Options, and are just proxy settings, etc. - all the BOINC prefs and project prefs are set on the websites.
Thanks for your help. I'm
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Thanks for your help. I'm getting gradually closer to joining my Macs to Einstein@home ... from a usability point of view it might make sense to un-grey the Preferences item and have it link to an appropriate URL when selected, instead of just being 'unavailable'. We're not quite at the stage where Granny can configure BOINC yet!
Benet
RE: from a usability point
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Agreed... this is one of those "cross-platform" problems. The "About" and "Preferences" items are there for ALL Mac apps (supposedly, some manage to mess it up). Windows and Linux, well, they're only there if the programmer adds them. The easy way out on the Mac is to just disable the menu item (grey it out) - one line, no other code need be written - and anyway, which project's preferences page would it link to? What if you haven't attached any project yet? Too many possible choices...
The vast majority of the Mac BOINC Manager code is identical to the Windows and Linux versions, it's all very "generic" C code. The _good_ news of that is when a bug is found and fixed in _any_ of the versions, it just takes a recompile and the Mac version has the fix as well (as seen by 5.2.8 being available for the Mac just a day after Windows). The bad news is we get to put up with some amount of "un-Mac-like" behavior in the tabs, menus, etc.
If you're attached to SETI, you'll see that "Your preferences" is one of the web-launch buttons on the left side of the Manager. Einstein has a different set, somewhat more complete, but for whatever reason doesn't include a direct link to Preferences.