Added tag METAPREFS. Added UTF-8 indicator to XML.    18 May 2002
Removed MANAGE element. Added REMOTEADMIN element and default attribute    ~~13 Feb 2002~~
Mention the XSL stylesheet.    ~~30 Jan 2002~~
Added useradded attribute    ~~28 Jan 2002~~
Added the MANAGE element.    ~~24 Jan 2002~~
Removed elements INSTALLATIONFILE and PREFFILE. Changed processPrefsTree() number of params.    ~~02 Jan 2002~~
Removed choose attribute.    ~~13 Dec 2001~~
Original version.    ~~11 Dec 2001~~
Steve Meredith

Structure of the Pref Editor XML File for the PrefsTree Widget

Introduction

The Pref Editor is a widget for CCK/Factory, named PrefsTree in .ini files. It is a tree control which displays prefs in a hierarchy and allows a user to edit their values. It reads an XML file to determine the structure of the tree control. This XML file includes information on each pref, including its name, its default value, a description of it, etc. It also includes structure for how these prefs are grouped in the tree control. The name of the XML file is specified in the .ini section for the PrefsTree Widget. The default file must be located in the same directory as the WIZARDMACHINE.EXE . When used, a copy of the file is saved in the working config directory. This copy contains the changes made by the CCK/Factory user, and is used by the install builder to write preferences in the install image. A SCRIPT.IB entry must be made in order for it process the .XML file: processPrefsTree(MetaPrefs.xml,browser.xpi,bin/netscp6.cfg) . Note that spaces are not allowed between the parameters (CCK limitation). For details on adding a PrefsTree control to wizard pages, see the document PrefsTree.htm

Who This Document is For

You will need to understand the structure of the XML file if you want to add or remove prefs to the Pref Editor or change how they are grouped.

A Note on Prefs

The XML described herein contains elements for prefs and elements to control how they are grouped in a UI. It was specifically designed for use in this Pref Editor tree control, but a complete representation of prefs in XML could be useful in other ways. But for this use, the only prefs which should be included in this file are prefs which can be set in advance and saved to a default .js, .cfg or remote .jsc file. Note that this excludes some prefs which might be found in a profile prefs.js , such as those prefs which define specific mail and news accounts, servers, and identities. These pref names are generated on the fly by the client. If this XML is to be expanded for use in other ways, for example as described in Bugzilla bug 17199 , new tags could be added to each pref to indicate whether or not it could be set in advance and stored in a .cfg file. The Pref Editor would have to be modified to respect this new information and only present the appropriate prefs for editting. Otherwise, any new elements and attributes are ignored as long as the basic structure of the file remains valid (<PREF>s are grouped within <PREFSGROUP> s) and the required attributes and subelements exist.

The following prefs should not be placed into this XML file for use in the prefs editor because they are handled outside the prefs editor, and used to point to the file created by the install builder and prefs editor.

autoadmin.global_config_url
autoadmin.failover_to_cached
autoadmin.offline_failover
autoadmin.refresh_interval

Problem Prefs

browser.search.defaultengine: This is a string type, but it looks like it's a URL to a local file (engine://). I can't set this to a resonable default value as I don't know where Netscape is going to be installed.
browser.startup.homepage: Problem when used with lockPref().
network.cookie.p3plevel has an interaction with network.cookie.p3p . When you change network.cookie.p3p, network.cookie.p3plevel should get set to some value. This happens in the pref code in the browser. There is no way to do this with the Pref Editor right now--prefs are treated as individual entities. For now I have commented what is supposed to happen in the description text for these prefs. In the future, perhaps we could define such relationships in the XML.

Conventions

For XML item tags, we use ALL CAPS. For attribute names, we use lower case. “true” and “false” are also written in lower case. Generally, for PREF items, the attributes are those things about the pref which are fixed, and use elements for thing the CCK/Factory app will change. The exception is for <CHOICES> , which are difficult to represent as attributes, so these are elements.

General Structure of the XML File

XSL Stylesheet

There may be a reference to an XSL stylesheet at the start of the XML file. For example, <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="metaprefs.xsl"?> . This is not used by the Pref Editor. It is used when the XML file is loaded into a Gecko browser (or IE 6) to format the XML into an HTML table that is easy to read. It is included so that the XML file may be self-documenting for internal use. The referenced XSL file must also exist in the same directory for the stylesheet to work.

Examples

The easiest way to understand the format of the XML is to look at some short examples.

Example1

The simplest file that may exist consists of one group containing one pref.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

 <METAPREFS clientversion="7.01b" subversion="0">

   <PREFSGROUP uiname="Netscape Preferences">

       <PREF uiname="Open Browser on Startup" prefname="general.startup.browser" 
 type="bool" default="true" lockable="true" description="When the app starts,
 open a browser.">

         <VALUE>true</VALUE>

         <LOCKED>false</LOCKED>

      </PREF>

   </PREFSGROUP>

 <METAPREFS>

The above file will result in a tree control with one parent, the group, and one child, the pref. See the example below.

Example 1

Example 2

The more complicated example below shows the top level group, with two sub groups, each with two preferences.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"

?>

<METAPREFS clientversion="7.01b" subversion="0">

  <PREFSGROUP uiname="Netscape Preferences">

       <PREFSGROUP uiname="Group 1">

         <PREF uiname="Autoload What's Related" prefname="browser.related.autoload" 
 type="int" default="0" lockable="true" description="A good description of
 this pref goes here.">

           <CHOICES>

             <CHOICE uiname="Always" value="0"/>

           <CHOICE uiname="After 
First Use" value="1"/>

             <CHOICE uiname="Never" 
value="2"/>

           </CHOICES>

           <VALUE>0</VALUE>

         <LOCKED>false</LOCKED>

        </PREF>

         <PREF uiname="Start Page" prefname="browser.startup.page" 
 type="int" lockable="true" default="0" description="Display this page when 
 Navigator starts up.">

         <CHOICES>

             <CHOICE uiname="Blank Page" 
value="0"/>

             <CHOICE uiname="Home Page"
value="1"/>

             <CHOICE uiname="Last Page Visited" 
value="2"/>

         </CHOICES>

           <VALUE>0</VALUE>

           <LOCKED>false</LOCKED>

       </PREF>

       </PREFSGROUP>

     <PREFSGROUP uiname="Group 2">

         <PREF uiname="Bookmarks" prefname="browser.toolbars.showbutton.bookmarks" 
 type="bool" default="true" lockable="true" description="Show Booksmarks button
on browser toolbar.">

           <VALUE>true</VALUE>

           <LOCKED>false</LOCKED>

       </PREF>

         <PREF uiname="Go" prefname="browser.toolbars.showbutton.go" 
 type="bool" default="true" lockable="true" description="Show Go button on
 browser toolbar.">

           <VALUE>true</VALUE>

           <LOCKED>false</LOCKED>

       </PREF>

       </PREFSGROUP>

   </PREFSGROUP>

<METAPREFS>

The above example also demonstrates how to include multiple choice prefs. These make it easier for the CCK/Factory user to select pref values without understanding how they are implemented. This XML file results in the prefs tree structure in the example below.

Example 2

Reference

The structure of the file is important. Not much work as been put into handling malformed files. If the XML is invalid, you'll get an error that the file failed to load, an error type, and a line number. If you create valid XML, but don't follow the rules as defined here, the behaviour is undefined. It's probably easiest to start with an existing prefs XML file, then cut, paste, and edit the <PREF>s from there.

<METAPREFS>

The entire prefs XML is surrounded by one of these tags. It contains a file version.

Attribute	Example	Description
`clientversion`	`clientversion="7.01b"`	This is the version of the client this file is for. It indicates which version of the browser client the file can be used customize.
`subversion`	`subversion="0"`	This is to keep track of minor revisions to the XML within the version.

<PREFSGROUP>

Each <PREFSGROUP> element will make a new level of hierarchy in the tree control. A <PREFSGROUP> may contain <PREF> s or other <PREFSGROUP> or both, but must not be empty. The first element in the file after the surrounding <METAPREFS> tag must be a <PREFSGROUP>. These may be nested arbitrarily deep.

Attribute	Example	Description
`uiname`	`uiname="Netscape Preferences"`	This is the name of the group as it appears in the tree control. By convention, capitalize the words as if this were a title.

<PREF>

Each pref element will make a leaf node in the tree control--a pref which the user can edit.These elements must be contained in some <PREFSGROUP> .

Attribute	Example	Description
`uiname`	`uiname="Open Browser on Startup"`	This is the name of the pref as is appears in the tree control. It doesn't have to be the name of the pref--it should be something easy for the user to understand. By convention, capitalize the words as if this were a title.
`prefname`	`prefname="general.startup.browser"`	This is the real name of the pref as it is used by the Netscape client products.
`type`	`type="bool"`	Must be one of `int`, `bool` , or `string`. This determines how the pref will be edited in the Pref Editor and how it is written to the prefs file in the install image. `bool` Pref Editor user allowed to select “true” or “false” from a drop-down. No quotes are used when writing the pref in the pref file. For example, `pref("general.startup.browser", true);` `int` Pref Editor user allowed to enter integers. No quotes are used when writing the pref in the pref file. For example, `pref("network.proxy.socks_version", 5);` `string` Pref Editor user may enter whatever he likes. Quotes are used when writing the pref in the pref file. For example, `pref("general.useragent.vendorComment", "AK-MyISP");`
`lockable`	`lockable="true"`	Determines whether or not the Pref Editor user can change the lock state the pref. This is included in case there are prefs which, for technical reasons, don't work when locked or locking them does not have the correct affect. If set to true, the Pref Editor should disable the "Lock this pref" checkbox.
`description`	`description="When the application starts, open a browser window."`	This is some text which further describes the pref to the Pref Editor user. It appears when the user selected the pref for editing. Any text which helps the user under the pref should go here. There is space in the editor for maybe 125 characters or so. Of course, you can edit the dialog resource to hold more if this becomes a limitation. Use proper sentences.
`useradded`	`useradded="true"`	This pref is added and set to true by the Pref Editor for all new prefs added by the user via the UI. It is normally not present, and is assumed to be false if missing. User added prefs are deletable via the Pref Editor UI.
`default`	`default="true"`	The Netscape default value for this pref. That is, the value that the pref will get in set to in the code or in some default .js file.

<CHOICES>

This element can optionally appear in <PREF> element if the values are to be translated into easy to understand multiple choice options. It contains more than one <CHOICE> element. When the user edits one of these prefs, he gets a list box from which he can select from those choices described in the <CHOICE> elements which are contained in the <CHOICES> element. It will work for any type, but it is up to the person creating the XML to set the values in the value attribute to the correct type for the enclosing <PREF> . See Example 2, and <CHOICE>.

The example below shows how a multiple choice pref will look like when the user selects it for editing.

Example 3

<CHOICE>

This element appears in <CHOICES> elements to describe one item of a multiple choice. Each <CHOICE> element in a <CHOICES> element for a <PREF> appears in a list box when the user edits a pref of this type. When selected, the value of the value attribute for the selected <CHOICE> is saved as the pref's value. See Example 2, and <CHOICES> .

Attribute	Example	Description
`uiname`	`uiname="Blank Page"`	The text of this choice in the list box for this choice.
`value`	`value="0"`	The value saved in the `<VALUE>` element for the `<PREF>` when the pref is edit and this choice is selected in the list box. The type of the value must be correct for the enclosing `<PREF>` element.

<VALUE>

One and only one must appear in a <PREF> element. This is the value of the pref. No quotes, regardless of type. This gets modified when the user edits the pref. Note that the modified file is saved to the working config directory.

<LOCKED>

One and only one must appear in a <PREF> element. This is true or false, depending on whether the pref is locked or not. If locked, prefs are written as lockPref() instead of pref(). See also <PREF lockable="true">.

<REMOTEADMIN>

This pref is added by the pref editor, and is normally absent in a prefs XML file until it has been processed by the prefs editor. If the <REMOTEADMIN> tag is present, and its value is true, then this pref will be written to the autoconfig.jsc prefs file when the XML is processed by the install builder app.