My modified File-Formats get lost after restarting app

[Gurce]

Hiyas,

I've got the Linux version of BC3 (v3.3.3 - build 14128), and I'm noticing that when I modify the file-formats and press the 'save' button, these modified settings only exist as long as the app remains running.

If I close the bc3 app, then re-open it, these modified settings seem to get erased.

That's the gist of it, but I'll provide more detailed info below, in-case what I'm trying to achieve is the cause of my problem here.

The full story. I used to use your BC3 app via Windows, and was a big fan of the "Xml Tidied" file-format plug-in you have for it. Although now that I'm developing for Linux, I noticed that this plug-in was intended for Windows only.

Not deterred, I thought I might still be able to make it work, by adding manually adding details to the "conversion" tab for the "XML" file-format, so that it can run the "HtmlTidy.exe" tool via wine. I set the "Conversion" step as follows:

wine /path-to-plugin/HtmlTidy.exe -config /path-to-plugin/XML_tidied_config.txt -wrap 0 -o %t %s

I then clicked the "Save" button to preserve these changes. The HtmlTidy.exe is run successfully, and the xml diffs work fine.

However, once I close the app and re-open it. These modified file-format settings for XML are lost and I have to re-type them in

Well, hope you can shed some light on what's happening.

Cheers,
Gurce

[Aaron]

Hello,

It sounds like the location your settings are stored in are Read-Only. BC3 is designed to be able to run from read-only media (such as burned to a CD), but in these cases we are not able to save changes back to the read-only location, such as any setting changes.

Which version of Linux are you currently running? Are your BCSetting.xml files browsable in your ~.\.beyondcompare directory?

[Gurce]

Hi Aaron,

I've had a look inside my "~/.beyondcompare" folder. There are many other files in there (such as BC3Key.txt, BCPreferences.xml), but not a "BCSettings.xml" file.

Oh, but I did notice a "BCFileFormats.xml" file in here. Upon starting the app, the file contains the following:

<BCFileFormats>
	<TTextFormat Value="%02XML">
		<UseRes Value="True"/>
	</TTextFormat>

After I add the settings for conversion and press the 'Save' button, the file is modified to:

<BCFileFormats>
<BCFileFormats>
	<TTextFormat Value="%02XML">
		<ConvertKind Value="convertApp"/>
		<ConvertLoadApp Value="wine /home/AUSTRALIA/gurcei/AlternativeFormats/HtmlTidy/HtmlTidy.exe -config /home/AUSTRALIA/gurcei/AlternativeFormats/HtmlTidy/XML_tidied_config.txt -wrap 0 -o %t %s"/>
		<UseRes Value="True"/>
	</TTextFormat>

Ok then, that's a good sign that the app is saving these settings properly.

However, if I exit the program, then restart it, as it starts, this file is automatically modified, my setting gets removed and it returns back to:

<BCFileFormats>
	<TTextFormat Value="%02XML">
		<UseRes Value="True"/>
	</TTextFormat>

Not sure why this is happening...

[Aaron]

Thanks for that snippet of code. I am seeing the same behavior here with that external conversion definition. We'll get this tracked down and fixed.

[Aaron]

One workaround to try, if you rename your .exe file (htmltidy.exe) to a non-exe extension (htmltidy.prg) and edit the command line to call it that, does this work for you?

[Gurce]

Awesome, that works fine. Just to confirm, after renaming from "HtmlTidy.exe" to "HtmlTidy.prg" and updating the conversion rule with this new filename, I can restart the app now and the conversion rule is still there (and hasn't been wipe out, as before with the .exe suffix).

Thanks for your help Aaron.

Cheers,
Gurce