The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
- Italic
Used to indicate new terms, URLs, filenames, file extensions, and directories. For example, a path in the filesystem will appear as /Applications/Utilities.
-
Constant Width
Used to indicate commands, options, classes, keys, properties, utilities, and program names, and to show the contents of files or the output from commands.
-
Constant Width Bold
Used in examples and tables to show commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
-
Constant Width Italic
Used in examples and tables to show text that should be replaced with user-supplied values.
- Menus/Navigation
Menus and their options are referred to in the text as File → Open, Edit → Copy, etc. Arrows are also used to signify a navigation path when using window options. For example, “System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver → Screen Saver” means that you would launch System Preferences, click the icon for the “Desktop & Screen Saver” preference panel, and then select the “Screen Saver” pane within that panel.
- Pathnames
Pathnames are used to show the location of a file or application in the filesystem. Directories (or folders for Mac and Windows users) are separated by a forward slash. For example, if you see something like, “… launch the Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities)” in the text, this means the Terminal application can be found in the Utilities subfolder of the Applications folder.
The tilde character (~) refers to the current user’s Home folder, so ~/Library refers to the Library folder within your own Home folder.
- $, #
The dollar sign ($) is used in some examples to show the user prompt for the
bash
shell; the hash mark (#) is the prompt for theroot
user.- Menu Symbols
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.
Figure P-2 shows the symbols used in the various menus to denote a keyboard shortcut. Rarely will you see the Control symbol used as a menu command option; it’s more often used in association with mouse clicks or for working with the bash
shell.
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