nah, it's because another (iphone) application writes a binary plist file that i'm trying to read (via dropbox)
so it can be read by windows and linux machines as well
going into the qt sources won't help me much because in the platform limitations (http://doc.qt.nokia.com/stable/qsettings.html#platform-limitations) of QSettings it starts with:
"On Mac OS X, the CFPreferences API used by QSettings expects..."
so that CFPreferences API won't be available on non mac platforms.
using ini files would have been great if i controlled the iphone application, but i don't.
I'll have another look when i finish my mac version first.
thanks all for thinking along. it's much appreciated !!