Down and dirty documentation for the Prefs package

1. Edit your Makefile and be sure "-lprefs" is in the definition of "LIBS".
2. Look at the file testprefs.h, which can also be found in /afs/ncsa.uiuc.edu/.u10/spowers/class/public/misc-examples. You should note all the "Values" declarations happen before the main Prefs declaration. Note this is an example file.
3. Look at the file prefs.h, which can also be found in /afs/ncsa.uiuc.edu/.u10/spowers/class/public/include. This contains the typedef strcutures for Values and for Prefs. You should be able to understand what each field is in the testprefs.h file now.
4. In any C file you want to access the prefs functions from, you will need to add "#include <prefs.h>".
5. To use the prefs library, you have to initialize it. You do this by calling "initPrefs()" passing your "Prefs" variable to it (like what is done in "ptest.c" (also found in /afs/ncsa.uiuc.edu/.u10/spowers/class/public/misc-examples)). This let's the library know what is valid and what is invalid.
6. Once you have initialized, then you'll want to read in the prefs you have created. For the purpose of this example, I created a file called .prefs-prj3 (also found in /afs/ncsa.uiuc.edu/.u10/spowers/class/public/misc-examples). You will see there are some mistakes, this is done on purpose to illustrate the types of error messages you could recieve. The proper format of a preference line is "<Valid_Token>: <Valid_Value>". If "LeftMouseButton" was a valid token and "Clip X" was a valid value, then you could put "LeftMouseButton: Clip X" in your prefs file. To actually read in the prefs file, you call "readPrefs()" passing the name of your prefs file.
7. Writing out your preferences is very simple. You only need to call "writePrefs()". You should probably check the return value as it should match your readPrefs return value. See the "ptest.c" example code.
8. More later...