Prefs and savefiles

[d_m]

Exactly, it's a question of expected behavior versus actual behavior. People will often write "regression tests" after fixing bugs--if the bug crops up again the regression test will catch this, and report a regression.

[Marble Dice]

... I don't understand why preferences and settings are separate.

I think the premise is that preferences (macros, inscriptions, squelch) are possibly class dependent, and should support a multi-tier loading process (player.prf > class.prf > name.prf). Settings (visual prefs, options) probably don't change based on the class or the character, and so there's no need to complicate them with a tiered loading/saving process which could lead to confusion about why your settings aren't getting applied properly in all situations.

Although I guess you could just always save them in only the "player.prf" or equivalent tier of the pref file system.

[Zababa]

macros cannot be saved in a save file, though keymaps can.
macros are OS-dependent; you really don't want to create a bogus macro from Linux on Windows, etc.

What exactly is the difference between macros and keymaps? Up to now I've used macros only. Putting aside the differences PeteMack pointed out, is there anything else you can do with keymaps what you cannot do with macros and vice versa?

[Derakon]

Macros can be invoked any time the program is waiting for input. Keymaps are only valid when the program is waiting for your next action in-game. Generally this makes keymaps safer to use.

[Pete Mack]

As derakon says. In more detail:

keymap is a single character mapped to a pattern (usually, but not always, another single character.) when executing a command only.
macro maps a set of characters entered 'at the same time' (actually, within 50msec) to another set of characters. It is applied in all cases, not just when entering a command.
This should only be used for mapping function keys, arrow keys, etc, that don't correspond to any ascii character.

If you use a macro to map (say) t to f, you will lose the use of the 't' symbol.

EDIT:
This is what i meant when I said macros should always be OS dependent, while keymaps shouldn't be.

[Zababa]

Thank you for the explanation.