The Dictionary preferences pane collects a number of options having to do with the appearance and behavior of dictionary windows and explorer views.

Opening:

Governs what should happen when you open a dictionary window. The issue here is that a dictionary window has two panes: the dictionary and the explorer. Which one should appear when the window opens? Your choices are:

• Show Dictionary. The Dictionary pane appears.

• Show Explorer. The Explorer pane appears.

• Remember Explorer/Dictionary state. The pane that appears is the pane that was showing when the dictionary window for this application was closed previously.

Explorer Options:

Scan for elements if count fails. Some badly behaved applications do not implement count properly, so Script Debugger can’t learn how many elements there are, and can’t populate the hierarchical display of those elements. (Eudora is a notorious case in point.) In such cases, if this option is checked, Script Debugger will ask for elements by index until a runtime error is encountered in order to discover how many there are.

Show list and record items for expanded elements. If checked, lists and records will be expandable in the explorer in certain rare cases where they normally would not be (most of the time, they will be anyway).

Show contents of list and records. Controls the “value” shown for lists in the explorer. If unchecked, the value tells the size of the list. If checked, the value is the literal list, i.e. curly braces containing items separated by commas.

Show description tooltips. If checked, tooltips appear when the mouse is hovered over items in the left column of the explorer. These tooltips are the comment from the dictionary describing the entity in question.

Show value tooltips. If checked, tooltips appear when the mouse is hovered over items in the right column of the explorer. These tooltips are the comment from the dictionary describing that class or enumeration. Not every item in the explorer has such a comment, in which case there is no tooltip.

Outline Options:

Show hidden items. If checked, hidden items are displayed in the dictionary. An example is the computer command in StandardAdditions. Hidden items are generally hidden by the application’s developer for a good reason, and showing them is not recommended.

Dictionary Caching:

Cache generated dictionaries. If checked, Script Debugger maintains cached copies of application dictionaries, for faster display. If unchecked, Script Debugger may be considerably slower when it needs to open or search a dictionary. Most users should not need to uncheck it. Concerning why you might want to uncheck it, or why you might want to click Clear Cache, read here.