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Configuring the Display

This is where you can configure 4Pane's appearance. The dialog starts with things concerning the panes themselves.
First is tree indents. In a dir-view, subdirectories are indented compared to their parent. If a subdirectory itself has children, there will be an "expand" box within that indent. You can configure both the distance between the parent level and the expand box, and that between the expand box and the directory's name.

Next come four tick-boxes. The first sets whether hidden files and directories are displayed by default (individual panes can override this setting).
The second is about where in a file-view a symlink-to-a-directory is displayed. Normally it's shown at the top, with the real directories. Untick this box if you want it below, in with the files.
The third determines whether directories and subdirectories are joined by lines in dir-views. If you don't want this, untick the box.
The last is about fileviews. Some file managers colour the background of alternate lines, presumably to make it easier to see which size, time etc belong to a file. I find these stripes unaesthetic, but if you want them, tick this box. You can then select which lurid colours to use by clicking the button on the right.

Lastly in this section, you can change the font used in the panes. Click the "Change" button to select a different font, which will be displayed in the adjacent box if valid. There's also a "Use Default" button.

The rest of the dialog is miscellaneous. First is a tick-box that specifies whether or not the current filepath is displayed in the toolbar. This is useful to have, partly to confirm what is currently selected, and as an alternative way of changing it (write in the desired filepath followed by Enter); but mostly because you can use Ctrl-C to Copy it, then paste into a different application. However if you don't want one, untick here.

The next two tick-boxes determine whether or not an "Are you Sure?" dialog pops up when you Delete or Trash a file. By default Delete does, Trash doesn't; but you can change this behaviour here. Below you can change which directory contains these cans.

Finally two buttons. The first deals with the configurable "GoTo" buttons that you get in each dir-view's toolbar. By default you get one for "Home", and another for "Documents" if you have a ~/Documents directory. However you can add more here.
Clicking the "Configure small-toolbar Tools" button brings up a dialog, with the current items listed on the left. To the right are buttons for adding a new item, and editing or deleting the current selection. Add and Edit produce similar dialogs; you're asked for a filepath to GoTo, and if you wish you can provide a tooltip. You can also click on the offered icon to change it, either to another of the built-in ones or one of your own.

The other button deals with tooltips. Clicking it gives a dialog where you can configure the delay before a tooltip appears, and whether they are shown at all. Note that this doesn't currently work for tooltips from toolbar tools.