# Configuration

## Chapter 10. Configuration

You can configure Regina by choosing Settings->Configure Regina from the menu under GNU/Linux and Windows, or Regina->Preferences on MacOS X.

There are several panels of options; each is described in its own section below.

## General Options

The General options panel controls the overall behaviour of Regina.

The settings here are:

Dock packets in the main window

  As of version 4.92, Regina works with lots of small windows instead of one monolithic window. The main window contains just the packet tree, and each packet opens in its own separate window.

  If you wish to return to the old behaviour (where packets were “docked” in the main window beside the packet tree), you can check this box. A large dock area will appear to the right of the packet tree, and each packet viewer will have an extra Dock / Undock button (indicated by the arrow below) that allows you to pop it out into a separate window if you choose.

Warn before generating non-embedded surfaces

  If checked, Regina will ask for confirmation whenever you try to enumerate normal surfaces without selecting embedded surfaces only. Regina asks for confirmation because non-embedded surfaces are typically much slower to generate, far more numerous, and Regina only offers very basic support for them.

Support transversely oriented normal surfaces

  As of version 4.92, Regina offers support for transversely oriented normal surfaces [CT09]. However, this feature is highly experimental and still a work in progress, and things will break if you use it. Because of this, transversely oriented coordinate systems are hidden from users by default.

  If you check this box, Regina will offer traversely oriented coordinate systems for creating and viewing normal surfaces. Once again, this is a work in progress, and you should not trust any results in these coordinate systems.

  Once this feature becomes stable in a later version of Regina, transversely oriented normal surfaces will be supported by default (and this option will be removed).

Labels on face pairing graphs

  If checked, Regina will label each node in the face pairing graph of a 3-manifold triangulation with the corresponding tetrahedron number. This will likewise affect edge pairing graphs of 2-manifold triangulations in the same manner.

Packet tree jump size

  Specifies how many steps a packet moves through the tree when you select Packet Tree->Move->Jump Up or Packet Tree->Move->Jump Down. See moving packets around for further details.

Text encoding for imports/exports

  Specifies how Regina encodes international characters when importing or exporting data. International characters are letters or symbols not found on a typical English keyboard.

  If you are not sure what to use, the default encoding UTF-8 is a good choice (this is a modern standard and can represent all languages). If you only ever use plain English letters and symbols, you do not need to worry about encodings at all.

  For more information on text encodings, see imports and exports.

Offer help for new users on startup

  If checked, Regina will show a link to the Getting Started dialog at the bottom of the main window each time Regina starts.

  You can view this information at any time by selecting Help->Getting Started from the menu.