MacJournal, like most apps, has a few hidden options that you can use. These are things that I think don't really fit into the overall design of the app, but might be useful for a limited few. The most notable is the option to show a new Preferences pane containing all the current hidden preferences. To show this, paste the following line into a Terminal window:
defaults write com.DanSchimpf.MacJournal IncludeHiddenPreferences -bool YES
To break it down, defaults is the name of a tool that Apple provides for modifying an application's preferences from the command line. write is the operation you are performing; type man defaults on its own line for more details on what operations are available. com.DanSchimpf.MacJournal is MacJournal's domain. This is the unique identifier string for MacJournal in the OS. IncludeHiddenPreferences is the name of the preference itself, and YES is the value you are setting it to. You can substitue NO to reverse the effects. The next time you launch MacJournal, open the Preferences window to see all the new options!
Note for version 2.6 and earlier: use IncludeHiddenPreferencesMenuItem instead.
A partial list follows here, including what version the preference first appeared and/or disappeared. For versions later than 3.0, just use the UI in the application to control the hidden preferences.
| Key | Values | Version Added | Version Removed | Comments |
IncludeHiddenPreferences
|
YES or NO
|
3.0 | --- | This adds a new pane in the Preferences windw to access the Hidden Preferences window. Requires Mac OS X Panther. |
IncludeHiddenPreferencesMenuItem
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | 3.0 | This adds a menu item under the Preferences menu item in the MacJournal menu to access the Hidden Preferences window. Requires Mac OS X Panther. |
UseMetalWindow
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | This "skins" MacJournal in heavy metal. |
SimpleInterface
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | For those that pine for the simpler days of MacJournal 2.1, this preferences makes the journals drawer a flat table again and removes a few other UI elements and menu items to make a less-capable but more simplistic user interface. |
HideDrawerButtons
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- |
A less drastic version of SimpleInterface, this just hides the new buttons that rest at the bottom of both drawers in the application.
|
UseShortDateFormat
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | When set, this will always use the shorter date format, even in cases where the longer one would be used. |
AlwaysShowSummaryEntry
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | Whether the journal is expanded or collapsed in the drawer, the summary entry will be shown (default is to only show it when the journal is expanded). |
StoreAttachmentsExternally
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- |
In 2.6, this is a very experimental setting that stores the files you drag into the text view outside of the main data file. This has the benefits of decreasing save time by several orders of magnitude, the ability to play music and video files after you quit, and you can drag the files back out of the text view as well at any times. However, consider this very experimental at this time; you might want to wait for beta 3 as well: I'm looking over this code for the first time in a while tonight. This only applies to new files dragged in.
This was made a real preference in 3.0. |
InsertDateAndTimeFormat
|
"%X %x"
|
2.6 | --- | replace the "%X %x" between the quotes (but leave the quotes) with a string made up specifiers from this page on formatting dates. This is the date and time format for the "Insert Date and Time" menu item. |
ShortDateFormat
|
"%X %x"
|
2.6 | --- |
Similar to InsertDateAndTimeFormat, this is the date formatting for the rest of the application long modes (short mode is for the drawers).
|
LongDateFormat
|
"%X %x"
|
2.6 | --- |
Similar to InsertDateAndTimeFormat, this is the date formatting for the rest of the application long modes (long mode is for exporting).
|
DisplayEntryTextAsAlternate
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | When no topic is available to display in the drawers, the date is used as a fallback. This default will tell MacJournal to use the entry text instead. |
LiveJournalPostURL
|
"http://www.
|
2.6 | --- | This changes the post URL for the LiveJournal sheet to whatever you specify. Make sure you have the exact address to which to post, not just the front page. |
EscapeNonASCIICharacters
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | MacJournal no longer converts non-ASCII characters (like é or ü) while exporting to HTML. This preference turns it back on. |
BackgroundPictureFraction
|
0.6
|
2.6 | --- | Lighten the background picture to (in this example) 60% of its original color. This is good for reading black text against a dark picture. Must be a number between 0 and 1 (1 is regular). There are some problems with this; some pictures end up tiling differently after the operation has been applied. |
BloggerProtocol
|
BloggerAPI or Blogger2API
|
2.6 | --- | The original Blogger API does not have room for a title to be sent along with the entry. This was solved in the Blogger 2 API. However, it was not as widely adopted as the original, so MacJournal uses the original to remain compatible with as many websites as possible. Set this to Blogger2API to use the newer API. In the future, MacJournal will adopt the Atom API which will have both title support and (hopefully) widespread adoption. |
TextInset
|
"{30, 20}"
|
2.6 | --- |
This puts a space in between the text and the rest of the text area; a padding, or margin if you will. In this example, there will be 30 pixels on the left and right sides of the text and 20 pixels on top.
Defaults to {5, 5} in 3.0. |
WrapTextWhileZooming
|
YES or NO
|
3.0 | --- | This will attempt to wrap the text of the entry to the width of the window, even if you are zoomed into the text. |
ConvertStylesToHTMLForBlogger
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | 3.0 | By default, MacJournal will not go through the extra effort for Blogger submissions that it does for HTML file exports of converting all the styles and line breaks to pretty HTML. This is because a lot of this is controlled by Blogger automatically and is best left to them. This boolean preference turns that back on. |
SwapUnlockJournalsOptionKeyBehavior
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | Holding down the Option key when clicking the Lock icon in the main window (next to the topic field) will attempt to unlock all journals with the password that you give. Use this preference to cause that to happen when the Option key is not down. |
CloseJournalsDrawerAfterUnlocking
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | This will cause the journals drawer to close automatically after a journal has been unlocked, in case you want to hide the contents in a public and/or sensitive situation. |
EscapeNonASCIICharactersForBlogger
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- |
Non-ASCII characters will be converted to their HTML escaped entities. Set this pref to NO to disable this.
|
IndividualFilesBackupPath
|
~/Documents/
|
2.6 | --- | You can customize the path of the Individual Files backup. By default it will be the same place the data are saved. |
OpenJournalsDrawer
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | This does pretty much what the name says, but let me give you the reason: if you set both drawers to open on the same side and tell the Journals drawer to open the Entries drawer after selecting something, you might want to get back to that drawer after selecting something in the Entries drawer. |
SimpleHTMLExport
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | 3.0 |
When exporting entries to HTML, set this to YES to not export font information (for the most part).
|
EncodeGreaterAndLessThanForHTML
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- |
When exporting entries to HTML, HTML tag delimiters < and > are encoded to maintain their appearance in the exported text. Set this preference to NO to keep them as is to allow for embedded HTML.
|
SaveBloggerPasswordInKeychain
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | This setting will save the passwords entered in the Blogger sheet in the Keychain. This became a checkbox in 3.0. |
SaveLiveJournalPasswordInKeychain
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | This setting will save the passwords entered in the LiveJournal sheet in the Keychain. This became a checkbox in 3.0. |
IncludeSecondsInDate
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- |
This setting (default is YES) determines whether seconds will be included in dates.
|
AddRewrapTextMenuItem
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | 3.0 | This preference adds a menu item to the Format->Clean Up menu. This will re-wrap text that has hard line breaks. Select some text to just wrap that or else it will take the whole entry. This is standard in 3.0 and beyond, but will only show up in English for 2.6. |
UseBrowseToolbarItemAsHistory
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | 3.0 |
If you hold the Option key when using the Browse toolbar item (Next or Previous), it will act as a "History" button like Safari: go back to the last entry you were viewing or go forward (if you had gone back previously). Set this preference to YES to invert the behavior and make History the default and the standard behavior only happen with the Option key.
|
TransformSmileysWhenSaving
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | For no real good reason, set this preference to convert instances of the string ":-)" to ☺ and ":-(" to ☹. Smileys! |
UseFirstLineAsTopicForServices
|
YES or NO
|
2.6 | --- | 2.6 and 3.0 create a topic based on from which application the text came. Use this setting to use the first non-empty line instead. |
FullScreenKeyEquivalent
|
F8
|
3.0 | --- | Use this to customize the key equivalent for full screen mode. |
CustomFullScreenFontName
|
Monaco
|
3.0 | --- | Use this to customize the font name for Full Screen Mode. (Note: this may act oddly for certain types of text and fonts) |
CustomFullScreenFontSize
|
18
|
3.0 | --- | Use this to customize the font name for Full Screen Mode. (Note: this may act oddly for certain types of text and fonts) |
FullScreenTextInset
|
{20, 5}
|
3.0 | --- |
This is the text inset for Full Screen mode. See the notes on TextInset for more explanation.
|
DisableStylesForHTML
|
YES or NO
|
3.0 | --- | This will entirely disable styling for HTML exports. |
DisableStylesForBlogger
|
YES or NO
|
3.0 | --- | This will entirely disable styling for exporting to Blogger. |
DontSetEntryPosition
|
YES or NO
|
3.0.1 | --- | MacJournal automatically restores the insertion point to its previous location when you open an entry. Use this to disable this feature. |
LinkColor
|
Color data | 3.0.1 | --- | Use this to change the color of links displayed in MacJournal. This must be set in the Hidden Preferences window directly as it archives the color data directly. This requires Mac OS X Panther or higher. |
IncludeEntryTextInJournalSummary
|
YES or NO
|
3.0.1 | --- | When selecting a journal in the Journals Drawer, MacJournal displays a page of links to the entries in that journal. Enable this to show the text too. |
EscapeGreaterThanAndLessThanForLiveJournal
|
YES or NO
|
3.0.1 | --- | This will encode > and < when sending to LiveJournal so that they appear as those characters. |
AlwaysHideAutoScrollButton
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a1 | --- | Version 3.1 adds a new button during Full Screen mode to allow you to start auto-scrolling (a feature available in 3.0 only by knowing an obscure key combo). It is only visible when the mouse is in motion. However, if you don't want to see it ever, enable this. |
DontCreateNewEntriesInCalendar
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a2 | --- | The new calendar control in MacJournal 3.1 creates entries automatically when you click on a date that does not yet have one. Set this preference to avoid that. |
IncludeExtraToolbarItems
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a2 | --- | There are some toolbar items that don't yet have icons (two as of this writing). Enable this to show them with a default icon. |
AllowAdminToDeleteLockedJournals
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a3 | --- | This allows Administrators to delete locked journals using their user password. This is enabled by default. |
EnableTabs
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a3 | --- | This enables a prototype tabs implementation in MacJournal. |
DoNotShowLoadingWindow
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a3 | --- | This disables the "Loading Data" window that can show up when launching the app if you have a complex data set. This is helpful for using MacJournal as a login item with the Hide button checked. |
CalendarTextSearchDateFormat
|
"%X %x"
|
3.1a3 | --- | Set this date format to search the entry text for dates of this format as well as the entry's date when searching from the calendar view. |
AutomaticBackupPeriod
|
1
|
3.1a4 | --- | Set the number of days inbetween automated backups. Default is 0. |
DirectoryForEntryHTMLFiles
|
entries
|
3.1a4 | --- | By default entries are placed in the same directory as the index.html when exporting to HTML as individual files. Set this preference to specify a subdirectory. |
AlwaysShowTabBar
|
YES or NO
|
3.1a4 | --- |
Enable this to always show the tab bar (if EnableTabs is set) even if there is only one tab.
|
RestrictWikiLinksToCurrentJournal
|
YES or NO
|
3.1b1 | --- | This preference, enabled by default, restricts the search for entries matching a Wiki word to the current journal to reduce false hits. Disabled it to search all of the top-level journal. |
Here's one that's not used in the user defaults, but rather in the Entry Template window. You can use "Entry->Insert Date and Time" to insert a tag that will be replaced with the current date and time when you create a new entry. It looks like <$DateAndTime$> after it is inserted. For some undocumented fun, try manually typing <$CurrentArtist$> and <$CurrentSong$>.
If you're a fan of the summary entry (see the AlwaysShowSummaryEntry hidden pref above), then you'll be glad to know that pressing Option-Shift-Command-S anywhere will show the summary entry for the current journal.
Keep in mind that one of the reasons that these are only accessible via the command line is that I'm not guarantying that these will work after this version. Some of them (like the date format specifiers) will hopefully make it into UI in the future. Others are conveniences for this version and might be removed in the future if they conflict with something else.
I should also note before I get a lot of angry mail that MacJournal is not a metal application! Text editors do not belong on metal; it violates the rules for metal apps even by the loosest interpretation. So that's why it's a hidden option: for those that want it, they can try it out. However, it is not the official appearance for MacJournal.