Preferences

Generally you should change your preferences using the Preferences window or for implicit preferences, by using Interarchy as you normally would.

However, you can change preferences using AppleScript or from the terminal using the defaults tool. For example to use Passive Mode, from AppleScript:

set contents of preference "UsePassive" to true

or from the terminal:

defaults write com.stairways.interarchy 'UsePassive' -bool YES

Note that the defaults tool reads and writes the com.stairways.interarchy.plist file directly, and so it should only be used while Interarchy is not running. If you make changes while Interarchy is running, the changes may take place at some later time or may be overwritten by Interarchy with the previous values.

Note also that while we are documenting these preferences and the details of the format, the preference format is subject to change with each minor version so use caution in relying on this information. Further, if you change preferences to illegal values, you may cause Interarchy to misbehave or even crash.

Writing preferences using AppleScript or the terminal has one potentially significant advantage in that you can write preferences that are specific to a particular protocol, server, user or sub-path.

Each preference in the plist file can be either just the preference value, or can be a dictionary mapping strings to values, with a default entry named “DEFAULT” and the other entries of a format “protocol:server:user:path” where each field can be a * or a value (there is no pattern matching, so do not try to use a form like *.com). Protocol can be any of the protocols Interarchy supports, eg ftp, sftp, http, webdav, or amazons3. Server can be any host name. User can be any username. Path can be any path prefix - it should usually end with slash otherwise it may match paths you do not expect.

For example, to use Passive Mode in general, but Port Mode for porthost.com, from AppleScript do this:

set contents of preference "UsePassive" to true
set contents of preference "UsePassive:*:porthost.com:*:*" to false

or from the terminal while Interarchy is not running:

defaults write com.stairways.interarchy 'UsePassive' \
    -dict DEFAULT -bool YES
defaults write com.stairways.interarchy 'UsePassive' \
    -dict-add "*:porthost.com:*:*" -bool NO

And to set Interarchy to use the Backup file converter when accessing your Amazon S3 account in path “/mybucket/MyBackup”, you would do this:

set contents of preference "FileConverter:amazons3:*:*:/mybucket/MyBackup/" to "Backup"

What follows is a brief description of the various preferences you can set.

For example, to display text windows in Monaco 9 without anti-aliasing:

defaults write com.stairways.interarchy TextDisplayFont "Monaco"
defaults write com.stairways.interarchy TextDisplayFontSize 9
defaults write com.stairways.interarchy TextDisplayFontOptions 16789856

See also the AppleScripting and Unix Scripting sections.

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