# Taglog tutorial - Preferences

Taglog comes with a set of defaults for the way it is set up which suit many people, but is intended to accommodate a range of user preferences for the way things look, or the places files are stored. There preferences are saved in a configuration file which is read in when the program is started.

You can edit the preferences settings with the 'File/Preferences' menu item.

You will see a window which will look like this:

The first thing to note about this window is that the window title contains the name of the configuration file. This is the full operating system file name with any "~" expanded so you can find out which preferences file you are using.

Within the window are a number of items you can alter

Documentation Directory
  Taglog looks for its online help in this directory. Usually you do not need to change this. As with most labels in taglog you can see the online help by clicking on the label, and then on the Help item in the drop down list.
Data directory root
  Taglog will store its data files in this directory and directories which it will create under here.
Language
  The text within taglog is passed through the TCL message catalog and the help information is intended to be available in multiple languages. At present the only fully supported languages are English and German. If you wish to help with the translation please see the taglog internationalisation guide and send patches to the author. If you change languages then the help text will be available immediately in the new langage, but you will need to click OK in the preferences window and then restart the program to see all the text in your chosen language.
Hours worked per day
  Some of taglog reports can be displayed as time in man days. This is where you can adjust the number of working hours in a day to be right for you.
Date Format
  You can let taglog know your preferred date format here. Taglog always stores dates in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) in files, but the ability to have dates read and presented in your preferred format is being gradually added.
History and Current Window depths
  You can decrease the amount of screen real estate that taglog uses by reducing these sizes.
Number of 'Today' actions
  At the top of the main taglog window you can record a number of things you intend to do that day. That way you can remind yourself of your top priority tasks every time you look at taglog. The number of actions defaults to three. You can increase it if you feel very productive, or set it to zero to save screen space if you do not find the facility useful.
Id Prefix
  If you are working with a group of people on the same projects then you can set your Id Prefix to your initials. This will distinguish your action aa.testproj.1 (if your Id is aa) from your colleages fb.testproj.1 (if their Id is fb)
Start Procs
  Taglog runs a number of subroutines when it starts, to create windows, start timers etc. You can specify additional procedures here to customise the way taglog works for you. In particular if you specify "iconify_mainwin doShowProjects" then taglog will start with the Project Times window open and the main window iconified. You can use the Project Times window as a simple project timer, clicking on the projects to switch which one is active.
SMTP Preferences filename
  Taglog uses a mail implementation written in TCL. This has its own configuration file, because it might be used in programs other than taglog. This preferences item tells taglog where to find the SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) preferences file.
SMTP thishost
  Part of the SMTP protocol requires your computer to say what it is called. This allows you to set the name in case taglog has not detected it correctly.
SMTP mailhost
  The SMTP implementation in taglog is very primitive. You should enter the name of a Smart Host which will accept mail from your computer, and be responsible for delivering it. For Unix systems localhost should be fine.
SMTP email address
  You should enter your Internet style email address here
SMTP port
  Leave this at 25 unless you understand what you are doing.

## Starting with an alternative preferences file

Taglog normally looks for a preferences file in the following locations

1. ~/.taglog
2. ~/taglog.cfg

It will use whichever of these files it finds first as the user's preferences file. You can override this behaviour by starting taglog as
`taglog -- -c configuration-file-name`
From Unix you could set this up as an alias.

From Windows, if you have set up a shortcut to taglog on your desktop you can right click the icon and select Properties and modify the Target of the Shortcut properties as shown.
You can use this to run taglog with a set of preferences on a network drive. This set of preferences can specify the location of the data root as being on that network drive as well.

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