Environment Variables

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Environment Variables

Several environment variables can be set to affect the behavior of Synfig Studio:

variable	description
SYNFIG_DISABLE_AUTOMATIC_DOCUMENT_CREATION	If no documents are specified when synfig is run, it will create a new blank document unless this variable is set.
SYNFIG_ENABLE_NEW_CANVAS_EDIT_PROPERTIES	When a new document is created, the Canvas Properties Dialog will only be shown if this variable is set.
SYNFIG_DISABLE_OPTIMIZE SYNFIG_DISABLE_OPTIMIZE_TRANS SYNFIG_DISABLE_REMOVE_DUPS	These three variables, when set, disable various steps of the animated gif optimization process in the magick++ module. Namely: disable optimization completely, disable optimization of transparent pixels, and disable the removal of adjacent duplicate frames respectively.
SYNFIG_DISABLE_DRAW SYNFIG_DISABLE_POLYGON SYNFIG_DISABLE_SKETCH	These can be used to disable the named tools from being shown in the toolbox.
SYNFIG_ENABLE_WIDTH	If set, this enables the (mostly broken) width tool in the toolbox.
SYNFIG_TIMETRACK_HEADER_HEIGHT SYNFIG_TIMETRACK_ROW_HEIGHT	These are used to change the header and row heights in the timetrack panel. This is sometimes needed to make the timetrack panel rows line up with the parameter panel's rows.
SYNFIG_DISABLE_POPUP_WINDOWS	When set, this makes the splash screen and "one moment please" popup windows behave like regular windows - ie. they can be minimized, and covered by other windows.
SYNFIG_DISABLE_TILE_RENDER	When set, the workarea is always rendered using the scanline renderer, rather than being broken up into small square tiles which are rendered separately. This is overridden by SYNFIG_FORCE_TILE_RENDER.
SYNFIG_FORCE_TILE_RENDER	When set, the workarea is always rendered using the tile renderer, rather than being rendered in a single block. This overrides SYNFIG_DISABLE_TILE_RENDER. (added in SVN r2180)
SYNFIG_SHOW_TILE_OUTLINES	For debugging, this draws a red outline around each tile when using the tile renderer.
SYNFIG_ENABLE_POPUP_MENU_IN_ALL_TOOLS	Allow the right-click context menu to be used in all the various tool states.
SYNFIG_MODULE_LIST	Specifies where to load the list of dynamic modules from.
SYNFIG_ROOT	Specifies the path to the synfig resources. It should be the directory which contains share/pixmaps/synfigstudio/ - usually /usr or /usr/local.
SYNFIG_TOOLS_CLEAR_SELECTION	When set, unselect all layers before creating a new layer in any of the tools (other than the draw tool, which always leaves selected layers selected so that their ducks can be linked to).
SYNFIG_TRANSIENT_DIALOGS	Some window managers fail to associate synfig's panels with the toolbox. Setting this can help. It seems to work quite well on Windows too, preventing the panels from taking up space on the task bar, but be careful not to minimize any of the panels, it can cause problems.
SYNFIG_DEBUG_DESTRUCTORS	Logs the sequence of destructions that go on when closing things down.
SYNFIG_SHOW_FULL_TIME_ON_FOCUS	When editing a Time field, start with the full formatted time, ie. "0h 0m 1s 0f" rather than "1s".
SYNFIG_WINDOW_POSITION_X_OFFSET SYNFIG_WINDOW_POSITION_Y_OFFSET	Added on to the stored position of each panel when studio starts up. Used to combat the pixel-by-pixel drifting that happens with some window managers.
SYNFIG_SHOW_CANVAS_PARAM_WAYPOINTS	In PasteCanvas layers, show waypoints for the Canvas parameter itself, rather than for the canvas that is the parameter's value. Experimental. From SVN r1628.
SYNFIG_KEEP_ABORTED_DRAW_LINES	In the draw tool, if you make a very fast stroke, it's not used. Studio always used to leave the unused stroke on the display until a longer stroke was made. SVN r1689 changed things so that these short strokes are immediately hidden. Setting this variable restores the previous behavior.
SYNFIG_DISABLE_OPTIMIZE_LAYER_TREE	Before starting to render a tree of layers, Synfig makes an optimized copy of the layer tree, omitting any layers that currently have an amount of 0. The aim is to make the render go faster, but it may introduce some instability into the application. Set this variable to disable the optimization step.

In older versions of studio, the polygon, draw, and sketch tools were disabled by default. The following can be used to re-enable
export SYNFIG_ENABLE_POLYGON=1
export SYNFIG_ENABLE_DRAW=1
export SYNFIG_ENABLE_SKETCH=1
export SYNFIG_ENABLE_WIDTH=1

Suggested starting values to try when attempting to line up the timetrack and parameter panels:
export SYNFIG_TIMETRACK_ROW_HEIGHT=21
export SYNFIG_TIMETRACK_HEADER_HEIGHT=25

Beginning with SVN version r1127
Addressing bug 1829182: the popup caret menu has been disabled for several tools. There's no comment in the code saying why. Dooglus has added an environment variable which re-enables the popup menu when set. Export SYNFIG_ENABLE_POPUP_MENU_IN_ALL_TOOLS=1 to try it, and report your findings back to the bug report as to whether this should be the default or not.

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