Conventions Used in This Book

This book uses the following typographical conventions:

Italic

Used to indicate new terms, URLs, filenames, file extensions, directories, commands, options, and program names, and to highlight comments in examples. For example, a filesystem path will appear as /Applications/Utilities.

Constant width

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

Constant-width bold

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

Constant-width italic

Used in examples and tables to show text that should be replaced with user-supplied values, and also to highlight comments in code.

Menus/navigation

Menus and their options are referred to in the text as File Open, Edit Copy, etc. Arrows will also signify a navigation path in window options—for example, System Preferences Screen Effects Activation means that you would launch System Preferences, click on the icon for the Screen Effects preferences panel, and select the Activation pane within that panel.

Pathnames

Pathnames 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, you'll know that the Terminal application can be found in the Utilities subfolder of the Applications folder.

%, #

The percent sign (%) shows the user prompt for the default tcsh shell; the hash mark (#) is the prompt for the root user.

Menu symbols

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

Figure P-1 shows the symbols used in various menus to denote a shortcut.

Figure P-1. Keyboard accelerators for issuing commands

You'll rarely 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 tcsh shell.

Indicates a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Indicates a warning or caution.