Chuck Toporek - Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide

Used to indicate new terms, URLs, usernames, filenames, file extensions, Unix commands and options, program names, and directories (when viewed as a folder, the directory name is capitalized and not italicized). For example, the path in the filesystem to the Utilities folder will appear as /Applications/Utilities.

Used to show the contents of files or the output from commands.

Used in examples and tables to show commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Used in examples and tables to show text that should be replaced with user-supplied values; also used to show text that varies in menus.

The variable lists throughout this book present answers to How do I... " questions (e.g., How do I change the color depth of my display?), or offer definitions of terms and concepts.

Menus and their options are referred to in the text as File Open, Edit Copy, etc. Arrows will also be used to signify a navigation path when using window options; for example, System Preferences Desktop & Screen Saver Screen Saver means you would launch System Preferences, click on the icon for the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences panel, and select the tabbed button for the Screen Saver pane within that panel.

Pathnames are used to show the location of a file or application in the filesystem. Directories (equivalent to folders for Mac and Windows users) are separated by forward slashes. For example, if you see something like launch the Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities) in the text, that means the Terminal application can be found in the Utilities subfolder of the Applications folder.

The tilde character (~) refers to the current users Home folder. So, if you see something like ~/Library or ~/Pictures, that means you should go to the Library or Pictures folder, respectively, within your own Home folder. This is a much shorter representation than showing the entire path to the folder (which would be /Macintosh HD/Users/username/Library for the ~/Library folder).

A carriage return () at the end of a line of code is used to denote an unnatural line break; that is, you should not enter these as two lines of code, but as one continuous line. Multiple lines are used in these cases due to printing constraints.

The dollar sign ($) is used in some examples to show the user prompt for the bash shell; the hash mark (#) is the prompt for the root user.

When looking at the menus for any application, you will see some symbols associated with keyboard shortcuts for a particular command. For example, to open a document in Microsoft Word, you could go to the File menu and select Open (File Open), or you could issue the keyboard shortcut, -O.

shows the symbols used in the various menus to denote a keyboard shortcut.

Figure 1. These symbols are used in Mac OS Xs menus for issuing keyboard shortcuts so you can quickly work with an application without having to use the mouse

Rarely will you see the Control symbol used as a menu command option; its more often used either in association with mouse clicks to emulate a right-click on a two-button mouse or for working with the bash shell.

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