[gedit-list] Can't change Gedit preferences

[Jennifer Karmon <jhkarmon gmail com>]

I just downloaded Gedit a few minutes ago from the Gnome site to my Mac (OS 10.6.4). The preferences are grayed out and can't be altered. Anyone able to help with this? 

If possible, please talk Stupid to me -- I installed Gedit as a signup task in the hope of taking a beginning programming class (http://p2pu.org/general/learn-python-hard-way), and I am reallyreally a beginner. I did find a related bug at https://trac.macports.org/ticket/22992 -- but I was unable to make sense of the fix that apparently worked for someone else with my problem.

Thanks.