Jesse Welton wrote:
> 
> I have been thinking about putting together a brief introduction to
> the preferences, hitting on the most important/commonly used items.  I
> can't guarantee that I will have time to do this, but if people think
> it's useful enough I could push it toward the top of my stack.
> Suggestions for which preferences to include?
> 
>         inboardScrollBars
>         scrollBarsOnRight
>         annotationPanes
>         optionalButtons
>         noviceMode?

Those sound good.  I would keep it to a pretty short list, mentioning only the preferences that would be very noticeable to a newcomer.  The only other ones you might mention would maybe be balloonHelpEnabled and useGlobalFlaps, although even those could just be mentioned in passing at the end of your intro. (and possibly browseWithPrettyPrint, if you wanted)

Another thing to briefly mention in the preferences intro would be the existence of the "appearance..." menu, just to indicate that a bunch of preference-like settings are there, too.  (You wouldn't need an intro to the items in the menu, I think the menu is pretty self-explanatory.)

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com