4.12 Preferences

In this dialog you can configure some general settings of Hollywood Designer that are used for all projects that you open with Designer. The dialog is divided into the following pages: General, Defaults, Memory, Palette, Thumbnails, File extensions, Hollywood, Loaders, and Plugins.

a) General

This page allows you to configure the following options:

Always ask before copying files to the project directory
If you activate this option, Designer will show a confirmation dialog whenever it is about to copy files into the project's directory.

Always ask before saving
If you activate this option, Designer will always ask you to confirm that you really want to save the project. This is useful if you often hit the "Save" button accidentally.

Always ask before deleting non-empty pages
If you activate this option, Designer will always ask you to confirm the deletion of non-empty pages.

Always ask which language to load when opening multilingual projects
If you activate this option, Hollywood Designer will always ask you to choose the language that you want to use when opening project that has more than one language set.

Always ask before deleting object references
Activate this option if you want to be warned about object references when deleting objects. For example, an object you are about to delete might be referenced by an action event in another object. If you don't activate this option, you won't be warned about such object references and they will be silently deleted.

Always ask before deleting page references
Activate this option if you want to be warned about page references when deleting pages. For example, a page you are about to delete might be referenced by an action event in another object or page. If you don't activate this option, you won't be warned about such page references and they will be silently deleted.

Always ask before deleting group references
Activate this option if you want to be warned about group references when deleting groups. For example, a group you are about to delete might be referenced by an action event in another object. If you don't activate this option, you won't be warned about such group references and they will be silently deleted.

Keep position when editing the source file of an object
When this is set and you change the source file of a brush, anim, or video object, Hollywood Designer won't reset its position to the top-left corner any more.

Show progress bar when loading pages
By default Designer will show a progress bar when loading pages. On very fast computers it might not make sense to show a progress bar when Designer loads a project page because it will take only a fraction of a second. In that case, you might want to turn this option off.

Grid and guides
Here you can configure the color and style of grids and guides that can be shown by selecting the corresponding menu item in the "Edit" menu. You can also set the snap distance that should be used when "Snap to grid" and/or "Snap to guides" is active.

b) Defaults

This page allows you to configure the following options:

Default page settings
Here you can enter a default size for new blank, pattern, and gradient pages. Whenever you create such a page, Designer will use the dimensions specified here as the default ones. You can also set the default color for blank pages that are created using the "New blank page" tool in the left toolbar.

Default anchor point
The anchor point setting that you specify here will be inherited by all new objects that you create. By default, this is set to 0.5/0.5 which means that the anchor point will be in the center of every new object.

Create asynchronous action objects by default
Activate this option if new action objects should use asynchronous execution of their action events by default. You can change this setting later in the properties dialog for action objects. The option you set here is just the one that is initially assigned to action objects when you create them.

c) Memory

This page allows you to configure the following options:

Available memory
You can use this setting to configure how much memory Designer should consume for the user interface. If you have less than 64 MB of memory you should choose "low", if you have more than 64 MB but less than 192 MB choose "medium", otherwise choose "high". Note that even if you choose "medium" or "high", Designer has some safeguards that will make it use low memory mode in case memory is getting low to prevent running out of memory. When using low memory mode, Designer will use less images in its user interface to save memory. In medium mode, Designer will use more images but it won't cache them in order to save memory.

Maximum number of undo levels
You can set this to the maximum number of operations Designer should keep in its undo/redo cache. Set it to 0 for no limit. In that case, all operations will be cached but keep an eye on your available memory if you don't use a maximum number of undo levels. Otherwise Designer could run out of memory if you use it for several hours and all operations are cached.

Flush undo cache
Press this button to clear the undo cache. This can be useful if you'd like to free some memory.

d) Palette

This page allows you to configure the following options:

Keep color window open
If you select this option, Designer will not close the color chooser window when you hit the "OK" button. This is useful if you need to change the color of many different objects or if you have a very large screen that has room for the color chooser window as well.

Copy color from active object
If you select this option, the color chooser will always automatically receive the foreground color of the currently active object.

User palette
Here you can define 48 personal colors that you use regularly. You can then access these colors very easily by clicking the "Load user color" button in the color chooser.

e) Thumbnails

This tab allows you to configure the settings of Hollywood Designer's thumbnail viewer. You can specify the thumbnail size in pixels, as well as whether or not anti-aliased scaling should be used.

f) File extensions

This tab allows you to set the file extensions Hollywood Designer should use for the filter masks in its file requesters. There are four different groups here: Image, Anim, Sound, and Video. The individual extensions must be separated by vertical bar characters.

g) Hollywood

This page allows you to specify additional arguments that should be passed to Hollywood when running or compiling a project. For example, if you want to use the inbuilt resource monitor when running a script, you could add the option "-resourcemonitor" here. It also allows you to change the path where Designer should look for Hollywood and you can choose whether or not Hollywood should show its startup screen when running your project.

h) Loaders

This page allows you to configure the loader priorities for animations, images, sounds and videos. You can specify the order in which animation, image, sound, and video loaders are queried to open the corresponding data files. Designer supports the loader types "Inbuilt" (loaders provided by Designer itself), "Native" (loaders provided by the host OS, e.g. datatypes on Amiga compatibles) and "Plugins" (loaders provided by plugins). By default, plugins are asked first, then inbuilt loaders, then native ones but this order can be freely changed in this tab by moving the individual loader types up or down.

i) Plugins

This tab allows you to choose plugins that should be disabled or that should be required at start. Note that it is normally not necessary to manually require plugins because plugins are automatically activated. However, there are some exceptions: For example, the Polybios plugin is not automatically activated because it needs lots of resources. Thus, if you want to use Polybios, you need to explicitly select it here in the "Require plugins" list to tell Hollywood Designer to load it at start. Note that changes here will not take effect before you restart Hollywood Designer.


Show TOC