There appears to be great flexibility to customise the IDE in the preferences.txt file. However, while many enetries are fairly evident, many others are obscure, at least to this user.
Does there exist a list/file that explains all the enteries and their consequences? I have searched in all the usual places but only find snippets here and there. I feel thst the preferences.txt is no place to start experimenting. Errors or false values would not be unreceoverable but could be a wonderful time waster with little educational value.
Perhaps the powers behind the Arduino IDE feel that releasing such a list would only generate a flood of posts from persons who muddled their IDE trying to "improve" it. A boilerplate reply detailing how to revert to the original would handle these.
[boilerplate]
For those that understand, no explanation is necessary
For those that do not understand, no explanation will be given
[/boilerplate]
Really, I don't see the preferences as being in their final form. Eventually there would be some sort of property editor in the ide, but for know it is kind of an undocumented thing. You can always scan the processing java files in svn to try and see exactly what a particular setting is doing.
There's a commented version of the preferences.txt in the Arduino application folder. On the Mac, right-click on Arduino.app, select Show Package Contents, and navigate to Contents/Resources. On Windows and Linux, I think it's in lib/.
