Configuring WHAT's Settings at Startup

Configuring WHAT's Settings at Startup (17-Aug-06)

When you first acquire the WHAT program, it comes with many default settings, most of which we expect you will like, but you are welcome to personalize the configuration to suit your needs. You can even set up more than one way in which to start up WHAT, so that you have more than one configuration.

There are two methods of configuring WHAT on a long-term basis, namely how it will start up when you run it:

make settings in WHAT's initialization file, what.ini, and/or
prepare a command file which runs when WHAT starts up.

You may want to make a different program icon for your desktop for each of the variations you support on your computer.

The controls over the settings that you have using these methods should be sufficient. Please let us know if there is some setting you cannot make which is something you would like to change.

A word of warning - other users of WHAT may want to use your program, and you deserve to have a way of starting up WHAT in a way that is very close to how it is distributed.

These are the settings you get with the WHAT distribution:

The primary lexicon is lexicon 1, which is TWL98.
The secondary lexicon is lexicon 3, which is SOWPODS.
There is no indication on words that are in the secondary lexicon.
The indicator to be used if such indication is turned on is an asterisk.
The sought definitions file is named TWLdefs.txt and it is expected to be in the same directory as WHAT.exe.
The filename prefix for recording challenged words is: sc It is very likely you will want to change this, especially to include a directory spec.

The time periods when recording of challenged words is on is every Thursday starting at 6 p.m. for 10 hours. This applies to challenges handled when they are not tourney adjudications (with the Challenge Dialog taking over the program). It is also likely you will want to change this. When challenged words are being recorded based on these time periods, it operates in the mode of reverting to the Challenge Dialog when there is no activity for 30 seconds. This can be disabled or the duration may be changed via the File menu.

There is no specified default directory where files are sought for import or export.

The workspace font is Courier New.

The workspace font size is 16.

Long workspace lines are wrapped. Beware that cutting and pasting of wrapped lines does not work - this is considered a low-priority bug.

Some of the function keys have been assigned; all cause an automatic completion with the Enter key:

F1	-	! +?
F2	-	! +?=
F5	-	!/\|5
F12	-	!"

When WHAT starts, it can read a command file based on a command line argument. This is way to initialize other settings of the program that are controlled via commands. You can start the WHAT program by double-clicking its icon, or you can invoke it from a DOS prompt. If your current working directory is where WHAT.exe is, you can merely type the command:

what

or if you are elsewhere, type the path to the executable file and end with "what". Following "what" you may supply an argument to the program to direct it to begin by executing a particular command file, using a DOS command of this form:

what -x <filename>