.gitignore plugins
Refactor qsettings.value(…)

```QSettings.value(someKey, someDefaultValue)``` returns a QVariant
item on Mac OS X, Qt 4.8.4, PyQt 4.9.4, which does not concatenate with
strings. The solution I implemented is to include the optional
```type``` argument, either a string specifying the C++ type for Qt
(i.e. ```'QString'```), or a python type (i.e. ```bool```).