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Zim - A Desktop Wiki

Config Files

This page documents the various config files used.
Also see preferences for documentation of the preferences dialog.

Paths

Zim uses the scheme as laid down in the "XDG Base Directory Specification" as published by freedesktop.org. The default paths are:

XDG_CONFIG_HOME = HOME/.config/
XDG_DATA_HOME   = HOME/.local/share
XDG_DATA_DIRS   = /usr/local/share/:/usr/share

These can be overloaded with the coresponding environment variables.

When zim writes config files it always uses XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Data files are read only and are searched for in XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_DATA_DIRS. The installation defaults for config files are also installed in XDG_DATA_DIRS, but these are copied on first use to XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

Files

Main config file

The default config file is XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zim/preferences.conf.

The config file is written automatically when you close zim. So if you want to change it manually you need to close all instances of zim first.

Interwiki URL list

The file XDG_DATA/zim/urls.list gives a list of urls which are used for the interwiki function. All files in the XDG_DATA path are read when looking for an url, so you can use XDG_DATA_HOME to overload the installation defaults.

The format consist of one url per line, each line giving the key (which is the interwiki name), followed by whitespace, followed by the actual url. The url can conatin place holders "{NAME}" or "{URL}", the first will be replaced by the name of the interwiki page, the second by this name in url encoding. If no placeholder is found in the url the url encoded name is appended to the url.

Date format list

The file XDG_DATA/zim/dates.list gives a list of strftime formats, one on each line, to be used to populate the "Insert Date and Time" dialog. The first instance of this file that is found in the XDG_DATA path is used.

See this link for documentation of the strftime formatting.

GUI style config file

Zim has certain defaults on how to display styles. For example it displays links as blue text without underline. To change this style copy "/usr/share/zim/style.conf" to "~/.config/zim/" and edit it. Each style has it's own section which starts with the style name between square brackets and contains key value pairs for the various display properties.

NOTE: The display styles for the GUI are not used when exporting to HTML. If you want your HTML to show certain custom styles you should write a HTML template with a CSS stylesheet.

Example:

[TextView]
tabs = 40

[Tag bold]
weight = PANGO_WEIGHT_BOLD

[Tag italic]
style = italic

Known properties for TextView:

  • tabs: integer     - position of the tab stop in pixels

Known properties for Tags:

  • family: monospace, sans, ...
  • foreground: grey, blue, #cccccc, etc.
  • background: yellow, #cccccc, etc.
  • weight: PANGO_WEIGHT_BOLD, ...
  • scale: integer
  • style: italic, ...
  • underline: single, ...
  • striketrough: true, false
  • wrap_mode: "none", ...
  • indent: integer

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