I use two devices for writing my book: a pc and a laptop. I sync the project using cloud storage. This all works perfect. However, I optimized the UI for my pc with two large 4K screens and I mainly use dark colors. On my (old) laptop, with a small and not so clear screen, these settings are not good.
Therefore, I would like to use different project (UI) settings for both devices.
My question: can I safely exclude a file (or some files) from syncing without the project getting corrupted?
Some possible candidates would be:
/files/ui.ini
/files/ui-common.xml
Can anyone confirm that not syncing these files will only affect the view, not any actual contents of the project? Many thanks in advance.
On each device you set your theme across all the projects on it and your settings are unique compared to the pc so set each one to your preference and this does not effect the project content at all.
Thanks for your reply. Some settings however are not theme-specific, but project-specific. For instance the layout of the ‘composition mode’ (F11). This includes the font, some colors and an optional background image. So I guess I am wondering if these settings are stored in the mentioned files, and if excluding those files will help in maintaining separate layouts for both devices. Or if it will cause problems. Upon a close look at the files and what’s stored in them, I believe I can safely exclude them from synchronisation. This way each device will have its own UI-settings files, in the project folder.
I zip files between computers and then open and your right, each computer location will have a unique setting and can have different themes , composition mode settings etc per location, but consistent across all projects opened in that setting.
This information is stored in a .prefs file. These are part of a Theme, but you can also save the separately using the Manage button at the bottom left of the Options dialog.
With the caveat that these should be in the Settings subfolder of the project, not Files: yes those are the ones that would hold window size, position and other layout decisions.
However in most cases I would recommend letting ui-common.xml sync, as that is going to convey the majority of what you would consider to be preferential or session-related tracking. For example the history of documents you have recently viewed in the editor, which Collection you were viewing last, what has been expanded or collapsed in the binder, whether label colour should tint icons globally, which outliner columns to use and in what order (though the precise widths are in the platform-specific .ini file; and if it has ever been opened on a Mac you’ll see a platform-specific ui.prefs file for it).
It’s worth letting it sync for a bit to make sure anyway, as otherwise you’ll not only have different window layouts, but just about every toggle in the View menu will need to be painstakingly brought to parity every time you change something and then switch machines, never mind all of those little state persistence factors we take for granted, such as which inspector tab we were using.
That aside, neither has anything to do with content. They are even safe to fully delete, and that is considered a troubleshooting step in some cases, as a way of bringing a project’s entire view condition back to factory default, nothing loaded anywhere, all items collapsed.