NetPositive: Access hidden preferences
NetPositive now has many more options and settings than it used to, but believe it or not, there are yet more configurable settings that you can’t access from its Edit | Preferences menu. But before you bother looking around for a text-based configuration file, don’t bother — you won’t find one, because preferences are now stored in attributes attached to ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings
.
You can use any method you like for editing these attributes (the command line, for instance), but you’ll probably find that the easiest way is to drag this file onto the DiskProbe icon, then pull down DiskProbe’s Attributes menu. Most settings are either on or off, as specified by a zero or a one. A good example of a setting you can edit from here that you can’t establish by normal means are the HaikuErrorMessages — set this Attribute to 0, close DiskProbe, restart NetPositive, and you’ll now get standard, boring error messages from the browser.
If you’d like to make the process a little more user-friendly, save the script below (written by NetPositive’s chief engineer, Scott Barta) to /boot/home/config/bin/nphaiku
and run either
nphaiku on
or
nphaiku off
from the command line. Note that you can easily hack this script to control other hidden NetPositive settings.
if [ ! -G ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings ] then echo echo "You must run NetPositive at least once for this script to work" echo "properly. Please start NetPositive, quit NetPositive, and run" echo "this script again." echo exit 1 fi RUNNING=`/bin/roster | /bin/grep application/x-vnd.Be-NPOS` if [ -n "$RUNNING" ] then echo echo "NetPositive must not be running when this script is invoked." echo "Please quit NetPositive and run this script again." echo exit 1 fi if [ "$1" = "on" ] then # Turn on haiku error messages. rmattr HaikuErrorMessages ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings addattr -t bool HaikuErrorMessages 1 ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings echo echo "NetPositive haiku error messages enabled." echo exit 0 elif [ "$1" = "off" ] then # Turn off haiku error messages. rmattr HaikuErrorMessages ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings addattr -t bool HaikuErrorMessages 0 ~/config/settings/NetPositive/settings echo echo "Normal NetPositive error messages enabled." echo exit 0 else # A correct option was not given. Print out the help and exit. echo echo "NPHAIKU - Turns NetPositive haiku (poem) error messages on and off." echo " Error messages are in haiku form by default." echo echo "USAGE:" echo echo "nphaiku on - Turns haiku error messages on." echo "nphaiku off - Turns haiku error messages off." echo exit 1 fi