Setting local settings doesn't seem to work and minimal view config

[Mithrandir2k18]

Just stumbled across this wonderful viewer and wanted to customize it a bit.

I came across two issues/questions:

1. I want to build my .apvlvrc to have a sensible custom view and test some of the available settings. In vim this could be done by typing :set setting=value but this doesn't seem to have any effect in apvlv. What am I doing wrong?
2. I'd like the default to have no GUI elements, so no chapter-bookmarks on the side and no filename/pagecounter/zoomlevel/progressbar at the bottom, 100% of the occupied space should be the loaded document. How can I configure apvlv to look like that?