[Chimera-users] Global and per-user preference files?

[mike _]

I wish to deploy a Chimera installation across multiple machines for
multiple users. For obvious reasons the users will not have write
permission on the application directory. In this scenario Chimera's
default behaviour of regularly checking for updates is unhelpful so I
wish to disable it.

Having read http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/preferences.html#Preferences
I assumed I could disable the update checking by putting a suitable
preferences file in the application directory and then having users
invoke Chimera in such a way that preferences file is found. That
works, but generates a warning that the preferences file is read-only
(which it is, it's in the application directory) and Chimera seems to
only want to use the one preferences file. So the result is that users
can't save any preferences.

Is there any way to make Chimera read a global preferences file that
contains some useful defaults and also allow each user to have their
own preferences file?


thanks,

mike