Yes, it's really long overdue for someone to create a much slicker 
and easier-to-use and more attractive and more flexible alternative 
to the Preferences tool.

Ideally, the replacement would be a more general "Control Panels" 
tool, with a pluggable architecture, which could provide centralized 
and principled and *searchable* access to all system settings.  As 
such, it would subsume the existing Preferences tool, as well as 
almost everything currently found in the Appearance menu, and some of 
the things currently in the Help menu, and perhaps things in the 
Flaps menu, etc.

As Peter suggests, a browser-like interface would probably be a nice 
alternative.

SqueakMap would be an ideal place for new and better Preferences 
tools to start appearing...


Meantime, FWIW, here's a little snippet that will produce a window 
that lists the names and descriptions of all the existing preferences:

----------

| aString |
aString _ String streamContents: [:aStream |
     (Preferences allPreferenceObjects asSortedCollection: [:a  :b | a 
name < b name]) do:
       [:pref |
         (pref helpString beginsWith: pref name) ifFalse:
           [aStream nextPutAll: pref name; cr].
         aStream nextPutAll: pref helpString.
         aStream cr; cr]].
(Workspace new contents: aString) openLabel: 'Preferences'

--------

Cheers,

  -- Scott


At 11:17 AM +0100 11/23/03, Peter van Rooijen wrote:
>From: "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu>
>>  "Peter van Rooijen" <peter at vanrooijen.com> wrote:
>>  > Thank you for telling me this. I wish there was a button on the
>preferences
>>  > viewer that opens a window with a simple text documenting all the
>>  > preferences. It must be me, but I am simply generally unable to infer
>what
>>  > they do from their name.
>>  >
>>
>>  Mouse over them and help text pops up.
>
>What do you mean?
>
>I know that there is pop-up help. How does that help me to read the list of
>available preferences to see which ones I might want to use/change? It only
>helps if I accept working at a snail's pace, and also either have a memory
>like an elephant, or make notes of all the descriptions to be able to look
>at all of them together.
>
>I don't see any reason why it has to be so labor-intensive and time
>consuming to find out about and manipulate the preferences. This is the
>issue. Not whether or not whether the information can be accessed given
>enough time and effort.
>
>Maybe there is a preference I have overlooked called
>useBrowserViewForPreferences ;-)?
>
>Regards,
>
>Peter
>
>>  -Lex