# FXRuby - Howto remember some default settings as specified b **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 26, 2006, 3:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284 "2006-05-26T15:20:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/1 "2006-05-26T15:20:25Z")
Dear all, in an FXRuby GUI, I want to give the user many choices and I am searching for a way to let FXRuby remember these upon the next start of the GUI application. To be a bit more concrete, imagine a program that has a text widget, so that the user can enter some text and then choose language it should be translated from from several buttons that can be ticked. Now, I know how to set some default (say English-French), so that this appears everytime the GUI is started. But I would like to give the user the opportunity to change this to Chinese-Japanese, and save that choice, so that the default is set to this choice when the program is opened next time. I have many such choices, so this might make the GUI program more comfortable to work with. How could that be done ? Thank you. Best regards, Axel ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/2 "2006-05-26T15:42:31Z")
On 5/26/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Dear all, > > in an FXRuby GUI, I want to give the user many choices and I am searching for > a way to let FXRuby remember these upon the next start of the GUI > application. > […] there is no such mechanism implemented in fox / fxruby (at least i don’t know of any) you 'll need to hack your own. i had this problem too and wrote my own module for remembering usersettings. – henon ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/3 "2006-05-26T16:29:42Z")
On 5/26/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I have many such choices, so this might make the GUI program more comfortable > to work with. > How could that be done ? Store the user settings in a Hash object and then save that to YAML when the user changes options (or when the program exits…though that means crashes result in non-saved settings.) When the program starts, see if the user settings file exists, if it does load it, otherwise load the default settings. Then apply the settings to the GUI elements. Ryan ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 7:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/4 "2006-05-26T19:18:36Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > Dear all, > > in an FXRuby GUI, I want to give the user many choices and I am searching for > a way to let FXRuby remember these upon the next start of the GUI > application. This is what I use with FXRuby (but it’s not dependent on FXRuby or even on GUI): [http://redshift.sourceforge.net/preferences/](http://redshift.sourceforge.net/preferences/) A simple example (in terms of a hypothetical GUI lib): require ‘preferences’ PREFS = Preferences.new(“/tmp/prefs”) class Window attr\_accessor :x, :y def initialize PREFS.register\_pref\_key self, “my app/window” PREFS.register\_pref\_var self, :x, :y =\> “default\_y” end ``` def run @x = 7 # emulate user's interaction end ``` end Window.new.run PREFS.save An example is in examples/foursplit-prefs.rb. It remembers the positions of two four-splitters. It includes an optional method to make a reasonable cross-platform guess of where preference files should be (e.g. APPDATA on win32). The storage format is YAML, of course. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/5 "2006-05-26T19:21:43Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > Dear all, > > in an FXRuby GUI, I want to give the user many choices and I am searching for > a way to let FXRuby remember these upon the next start of the GUI > application. This is what I use with FXRuby (but it’s not dependent on FXRuby or even on GUI): [http://redshift.sourceforge.net/preferences/](http://redshift.sourceforge.net/preferences/) A simple example (in terms of a hypothetical GUI lib): require ‘preferences’ PREFS = Preferences.new(“/tmp/prefs”) class Window attr\_accessor :x, :y def initialize PREFS.register\_pref\_key self, “my app/window” PREFS.register\_pref\_var self, :x, :y =\> “default\_y” end ``` def run @x = 7 # emulate user's interaction end ``` end Window.new.run PREFS.save A longer example that uses FXRuby is in examples/foursplit-prefs.rb. It remembers the positions of two four-splitters. It includes an optional method to make a reasonable cross-platform guess of where preference files should be (e.g. APPDATA on win32). The storage format is YAML, of course. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2006, 11:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/6 "2006-05-29T23:27:39Z")
Lyle J. wrote: > [http://www.fox-toolkit.com/registry.html](http://www.fox-toolkit.com/registry.html) > > Hope this helps, > > Lyle I gave up on FXRegistry and its parent FXSettings (and wrote the Preferences lib) because of the attached, from FXSettings.cpp. Note particularly the 2000 byte maximum on entry values. YAML is much more flexible. It handles the value parsing for you, which is a minor benefit for scalar types (numbers/booleans/strings/Times/etc) but especially nice if you have complex values, such as lists of things or hashes. With YAML, you can have hierarchical values, which are good for remembering settings on nested panes, or dependent dialog windows and their fields/panes. For a simple application these differences may not matter. OTOH, FXRegistry can put things in the Windows Registry if that’s the way you want to go, for some reason. Also, if you need to interoperate with registry entries from C++ based Fox apps, FXRegistry is the only choice. Conversely, this will make it harder to interoperate with other ruby code that doesn’t know about FXRuby. /\* Notes: - Format for settings database file: - EntryKey may is of the form “ali baba”, “ali-baba”, “ali\_baba”, or “ali.baba”. - Leading/trailing spaces are NOT part of the EntryKey. - FXSectionDict should go; FXSettings should simply derive from FXDict. - Escape sequences now allow octal (\377) as well as hex (\xff) codes. - EntryKey format should be like values. - Extensive error checking in unparseFile() to ensure no settings data is lost when disk is full. \*/ #define MAXBUFFER 2000 #define MAXNAME 200 #define MAXVALUE 2000 ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2006, 4:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/7 "2006-05-29T16:47:10Z")
On 5/26/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > in an FXRuby GUI, I want to give the user many choices and I am searching for > a way to let FXRuby remember these upon the next start of the GUI > application. FOX’s built-in registry stuff is probably the easiest choice to use. It was a little disturbing to see so many responses that didn’t point out that option. Anyways, for more information, read this: ``` http://www.fox-toolkit.com/registry.html ``` Hope this helps, Lyle ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2006, 12:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/8 "2006-05-30T00:58:53Z")
On 5/29/06, Joel VanderWerf [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I gave up on FXRegistry and its parent FXSettings (and wrote the > Preferences lib) because of the attached, from FXSettings.cpp. Note > particularly the 2000 byte maximum on entry values. Thanks for pointing that out, I wasn’t aware of it. That one reason alone (including the associated risk of a buffer overflow) is enough to dissuade me from using FXRegistry. And I of course agree with your comments about YAML. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2006, 1:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-howto-remember-some-default-settings-as-specified-b/95284/9 "2006-05-30T01:29:52Z")
Lyle J. wrote: > On 5/29/06, Joel VanderWerf [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > I gave up on FXRegistry and its parent FXSettings (and wrote the > > Preferences lib) because of the attached, from FXSettings.cpp. Note > > particularly the 2000 byte maximum on entry values. > > Thanks for pointing that out, I wasn’t aware of it. That one reason > alone (including the associated risk of a buffer overflow) is enough > to dissuade me from using FXRegistry. And I of course agree with your > comments about YAML. IIRC it doesn’t cause buffer overflow, it just truncates the data. But that can cause mysterious bugs if you’re not expecting it.