Babbletower - Properties File

Default Properties File - optional

Babbletower can use a properties file for various default setups. The name of this file is babbletower.properties. This file needs to be stored in Babbletower's working directory.

The format of this file follows the convention for Java properties files:

An entry has the basic format:
key = value
The key, which is the name for a particular property, may not contain any white space, e.g. space or tabulator. The value is everything from the first non white space character after the = until the end of the line. If you want to split a value across several lines, put a backslash \ at the end of the line.
Comment lines need to start with a # or ! character.

Following an explanation of the various properties you can set in this properties file.

Dictionary Directory

With this you can tell Babbletower where your dictionaries and their setup files are located. By default, it expects them to reside in the working directory. The path property allows you to specify a different directory. For the path separator, use the slash / character.

This property needs to be preceded by a device name. For details, see the section on device settings below.

Example

pc.path = d:/bin/dictio/data
ipaq.path = /memorycard/dictio/data

Here, two paths are specified. Which one will be used depends on the device name specified via the -d parameter upon startup of Babbletower.

Device Settings

You can set a few general program parameters such as size and colors. All of these settings need to be prepended by a device name. That way you can define settings for several devices, in the same properties file, e.g. for your PDA and your notebook computer. Use the -d option with the device name to select one of these settings when you run Babbletower. The default device name is pda

Following a table with the currently supported device settings:

property meaning
left left-hand screen position

top top screen position

width width of the program window

height height of the program window

color.front foreground color, e.g. text. You can specify a color either as three decimal numbers, in the order red green blue, separated by spaces, or as a hexadecimal number written in the format 0xnnnnnn, representing the combined RGB value.

color.back background color

property	meaning
`left`	left-hand screen position
`top`	top screen position
`width`	width of the program window
`height`	height of the program window
`color.front`	foreground color, e.g. text. You can specify a color either as three decimal numbers, in the order red green blue, separated by spaces, or as a hexadecimal number written in the format `0x`nnnnnn, representing the combined RGB value.
`color.back`	background color

Example

Here an example using the device name ipaq:

ipaq.left=0
ipaq.top=26
ipaq.width=240
ipaq.height=294
ipaq.color.back=0xC4C4C4