Options window

The options window (or preferences window) has two tabs at the top, separating the options into two categories, which are addressed separately below. The OK and Cancel buttons at the bottom of the window work as usual; the Apply button puts all of your recent changes into effect without closing the options window.

The Files tab

An options window open to the files tab looks like the following illustration.

The Group search paths section

This section determines what directories on your computer are searched for group definition files when Group Explorer starts up. Several relevant facts are worth noting here.

This only governs actions Group Explorer takes upon startup. Changes made to the list of search paths will only change your configuration on disk; it will not load new groups. You will need to close and restart the application in order for groups in any new paths you specify to be loaded (or for any groups in paths you delete to be ignored).
You can have as many paths as you like on this list. Group Explorer comes with one path on the list--the path pointing to the group library that shipped with Group Explorer. If you move Group Explorer from one point on your hard disk to another, it may become confused, and you will need to update the path to Group Explorer's new location.
Only files ending in the extension .group are considered group definition files. Other files in the search paths are irrelevant. Furthermore, the search paths are searched recursively. That is, all subdirectories of any path you give are searched.
It is advisable to put groups you define in your own folder (~yourname/whatever on Unix-based machines, My Documents\whatever on Windows machines, etc.) and add a link here rather than to add group files to the folder of groups that come with Group Explorer. This way you can keep your work separate from others' work, and easily upgrade to future versions of Group Explorer without risking obliterating your personal work.
Very large group files take a long time to load! See below for more details. Also, the more groups you load the slower the loading of Group Explorer will be! For these reasons, you have these options to selectively search certain directories and ignore others. For example, if you have a library of very large groups, you can keep them in a separate directory, and only include it in the search paths for the times you absolutely need to consider those groups. That way, they don't slow down your use of the software at times when you don't need them. An alternative strategy for filtering out the loading of large, complex groups exists--see below.

The Sheet search paths section

This section is completely analogous to the Group search paths section, except it looks for sheet definition files, which end with the extension .sheet. Two exceptions to the Group search paths are worth noting.

Although Group Explorer comes with a sheets directory, the focus of the program is not to come with an impressive sheet library. The group library is an essential focus of Group Explorer, but a library of sheets is not. For this reason, most sheets that Group Explorer knows about will be ones that you yourself create and save. (Note that Group Explorer can auto-generate a lot of sheets for you, but they are just that: auto-generated, not static on-disk when the software is shipped.) Just as the above notes encourage you to keep a groups directory among your own documents (if you want more groups than come with Group Explorer), you are also encouraged to keep your own sheets directory.
The search paths for sheets are used at two different times. First, they are used when Group Explorer is starting up, to find sheets that relate to groups in the library, so that they can be linked to from group info windows. Second, they are used when the user asks to search all sheets from the search window. This is an important difference from the Group search paths.

The Other data tab

User information

This information will be embedded into your configuration file. This is intended to be useful for future applications that will allow users to share settings (such as notes on groups, naming schemes, etc.) and sheets. The information can be used to track who kept what notes, etc. However, so far such features have not been implemented. The user information is therefore a formality at this point.

Startup limitations

These limitations are extremely important for protecting Group Explorer from getting bogged down loading large or complicated groups, and therefore keeping its response time quick. Many computations are done every time a group is loaded and placed in the group library. If dozens of groups, or just a few very large groups, are loaded, the startup time for the software can be quite long. For this reason, you may filter your group library using two parameters. These parameters apply to all groups in the search paths discussed above.

Maximum group file size

The quickest way for Group Explorer to skip over large groups is to ignore ones with too large a file size on disk. This way, Group Explorer doesn't need to waste precious startup milliseconds parsing the content of the file (or even opening the file for reading). This is a crude precaution, but a necessary one, which is why you cannot turn it off! (You may set the threshold ridiculously high, but you cannot stop Group Explorer from using some threshold.) Simply the parsing of an enormous group data file into memory can take quite some time, and this helps protect from that.

Maximum group order

This is the more useful of the two filters on group data files. To determine a group's order, Group Explorer only needs to read the first 10-20 lines of the file, which can be done fairly quickly, regardless of the file's actual size or complexity. And it is large group files that slow Group Explorer down. Thus you can, for example, keep a very extensive group library, containing potentially dozens of large groups that would literally take minutes to load (!), and yet not load them the majority of times that you use the software, by keeping this threshold at 10 or 20. Thus most of your use of Group Explorer can involve a quick startup, but occasionally when you need to explore large groups, change this threshold and put up with the extensive computational effort required to prepare Group Explorer to help you explore those groups.

Future plans for these issues

In the future, Group Explorer may have a general facility for pre-computing a lot of the complex information about a group and storing it on disk, so that it need not be computed every time you run the software, unless group files change. But this technology is not currently implemented.