Learning About Leo's Options

[Thomas Passin]

From time to time Leo adds new options, but it's hard to know that this happened let alone know what they are.  Once in a while a setting might get removed, too. And even a long-time user can forget that such-and-such an option exists.

Leo has a large number of settings and it can be overwhelming to try to get a handle on them  But it is possible.  Here is a fairly easy way to it.  Options for specific capabilities are boolean - they are either turned on or turned off by default.  A boolean setting is specified in a settings tree by a headline like @bool highlight-body-line = False.  Leo's default settings are all in the outline LeoSettings.leo. To find options that are not turned on by default, search that outline using the Nav tab, and search for this string: 

= False.

This will show you a list of nodes whose headlines are for boolean settings that are turned off by default.  Clicking on one will navigate you to that node. Sometimes the node's body has some explanation.  If not, you can search for that setting's name in Leo's code base, LeoPyRef.leo.

You can also search for settings that are turned on by default by searching for = True, but this is less helpful because you are already used to Leo using those options.  As an example, in another thread a day or two ago, the option for highlighting the current line came up.  The listing for searching for False options has this as the third result:

@bool highlight-body-line = False

That's the setting for turning on highlighting of the current line in the body.  You can turn on any of these options by copying that node into the settings tree in your customization file myLeoSettings.leo and change the False to True.

There may be a few obsolete settings that didn't get removed, but there don't seem to be many of them.

[HaveF HaveF]

A good addition to the documentation. 

I just review my custom settings, in addition to font-related configuration, I have

@bool log-pane-wraps = True

@bool show-tips = False

@bool highlight-body-line = True

@enabled-plugins

and some plugins settings etc.

It looks like I didn't configure much. Leo works great in default.