The main switch

An environment variable StartACME has a start key function.

• If the variable does not exist or is set to a value other than FALSE, ACME is started
• If set to FALSE (not case sensitive), the CAD program starts without loading ACME.

About configuration files

There are many things that can be customized. In addition, there are several small configuration files, instead of one large file. The reason is that it is easy to put the different (copies of) files at different places, higher, in the search path.

The default location for (ACME) configuration files is %appdata%\NedCAD\ACME.

It is important that acme.cfg stays there.

This means that the CAD program can always start without problems. The location of acme.cfg is therefore hard-coded.

Explanation file syntax

The files almost always have the following structure:

## An example
# Hashes are meant for lines with comments

# Empty lines are no problem
# The structure is:
# label;value1 [; value2 ...]
# where the separator is a semicolon. For instance:
acme-preferences;hen-grenade;dehydrated-boulders;atom-re-arranger
acme-aversion;hi-speed-tonic
acme-used-today;1

# Syntax checking is limited, so:
# PREVENT ERRORS!

Why a semicolon delimited file? XML is overkill and ; – semicolon separator – is suitable for small scale BricsCAD and AutoCAD customization, just like the old .mnu syntax, prior to .cui structures, simply because it is a rare character that is not used on the command line and Lisp.