Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Property Lists

A property list is a text file that stores some arbitrary lists of information in a standard format. It’s most often used by the Mac OS X defaults system (as described in Chapter 22). Some applications use the format for other purposes; Omni Software’s OmniOutliner, for example, uses the property list format for all of its documents (though they have their own extension, .ooutline, and hence system identity, apart from .plist files).

Most property lists these days are in XML format, adhering to a property list DTD file found at /System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd.

Because it’s plain text, you can edit a property list with any editor covered in this chapter (and every other plain-text editor, too). Because it’s XML, you can open and edit a property list file with any general XML editing program. Under /Developer/Applications you’ll find the Property List Editor application, which lets you browse and edit these files with a hierarchical view, as Figure 9-2 shows.

Warning

Property lists may be easy to edit, but watch where you step. Making changes to the sole copy of a file that an application uses for preferences storage, for example, might end up corrupting that file, either through breaking the XML or just inserting values that the application doesn’t expect or know how to handle.

Consider using only the defaults command, detailed in Chapter 22, to adjust property lists that control application or system behaviors. (This is assuming that you want to make adjustments ...