Mac OS X Unleashed

By John Ray and William C. Ray

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Introduction to Mac OS X
  • Chapter 1. Mac OS X Component Architecture
  • Chapter 2. Installing Mac OS X
  • Chapter 3. Mac OS X Basics
  • Chapter 4. The Finder: Working with Files and Applications
    • Using the Finder
    • Finder Status Bar
    • Finder Toolbar
    • Finder File Operations
    • Getting File Information
    • The Desktop and Finder Preferences
    • Burning CDs
    • Using the Dock
    • Customizing the Dock
    • Process Manager: Force Quitting Applications
    • Summary
  • Chapter 5. Running Classic Mac OS Applications
  • Part II: Inside Mac OS X
  • Chapter 6. Native Utilities and Applications
  • Chapter 7. Internet Communications
  • Chapter 8. Installing Third-Party Applications
  • Part III: User-Level OS X Configuration
  • Chapter 9. Network Setup
  • Chapter 10. Printer and Font Management
  • Chapter 11. Additional System Components
  • Part IV: Introduction to BSD Applications
  • Chapter 12. Introducing the BSD Subsystem
  • Chapter 13. Common Unix Shell Commands: File Operations
  • Part V: Advanced Command-Line Concepts
  • Chapter 14. Advanced Shell Concepts and Commands
  • Chapter 15. Command-Line Applications and Application Suites
  • Chapter 16. Command-Line Software Installation
  • Chapter 17. Troubleshooting Software Installs, and Compiling and Debugging Manually
  • Chapter 18. Advanced Unix Shell Use: Configuration and Programming (Shell Scripting)
  • Part VI: Server/Network Administration
  • Chapter 19. X Window System Applications
  • Chapter 20. Command-Line Configuration and Administration
  • Chapter 21. AppleScript
  • Chapter 22. Perl Scripting and SQL Connectivity
  • Chapter 23. File and Resource Sharing with NetInfo
  • Chapter 24. User Management and Machine Clustering
  • Chapter 25. FTP Serving
  • Chapter 26. Remote Access and Administration
  • Chapter 27. Web Serving
  • Part VII: Server Health
  • Chapter 28. Web Programming
  • Chapter 29. Creating a Mail Server
  • Chapter 30. Accessing and Serving a Windows Network
  • Chapter 31. Server Security and Advanced Network Configuration
  • Chapter 32. System Maintenance
  • Appendix A. Command-Line Reference
  • Appendix B. Administration Reference

Getting File Information

The Mac OS has always returned a wealth of information about a file via the Get Info option from the Finder's File menu. In Mac OS X, this is no different, although the menu is now named Show Info (Command+I). Unlike Mac OS 8/9, the Mac OS X Info window can display a great deal more information about your files and folders, such as graphical previews and user permissions.

Let's take a look at each one of the possible views, the information it contains, and what it means to you.

General Information

The default Show Info window can be displayed by selecting the file you want to examine within the Finder, and then choosing Show Info (Command+I) from the File menu. As shown in Figure 4.21, the initial information window provides basic facts about the selected resource. The Show Info window can display additional information about a selected resource by switching to different panels within that window. Although there doesn't seem to be an official word to describe different views of information contained within a single window, panel and pane are a frequently used terms.

Figure 4.21 The General Information panel provides basic size/location/type information about a file.

Selecting a file and choosing Show Info displays data about that file, and has several options for revealing additional information:

• Show— This pop-up menu sets the type of information being shown. Use this to toggle between the different Show Info display panels. Not all types are available for all files (you can't, for example, show a preview of an application).
• Kind— The type of file being examined (application, movie, and so on).
• Size— The size of the file or folder.
• Where— The full path to the selected resource.
• Created— The day and time the item was created.
• Modified— The day and time the item was last modified.
• Version— The version of the document. Usually available only on application files.
• Stationery Pad— Available for document files only. If the Stationery Pad check box is checked, the file can be used to create new files, but cannot be modified itself. This is used to create template files for common documents.
• Locked— If this option is checked, the file cannot be modified or deleted until it is unlocked. For Linux/Unix users, this is equivalent to setting the immutable flag for the file.
• Comments— Enter any comments you want to make about a file in the Comments field. This enables the user to annotate files in the file system.

If the file you are viewing is an alias file, the General Information panel will also show the location of the original file along with a Select New Original button that lets you pick a new file to attach the alias to.

Changing Icons

If you're unhappy with the icon of the resource you're examining, you can click the object's icon within the General Information panel, and then use the Copy and Paste options in the Edit menu to move icons or images from other files onto the selected item.

Name & Extension

Mac OS X shares something with Windows: file extensions. Although it is still possible for files to have the traditional Macintosh file types and creators, it is no longer the norm. To shield users from the shock of seeing extensions to the names of their files, Apple introduced the ability to hide file extensions in Mac OS X 10.1. Users can turn off this option on a file-by-file basis by accessing the Name & Extension portion of the Show Info panel, as seen in Figure 4.22.

Figure 4.22 The Name & Extension panel can hide or reveal file extensions.

To edit the filename itself (including the extension) make modifications within the File system name field. Turn on (or off) file extensions by clicking the Hide Extension check box.

Open with Application

If you have selected a document icon (not an application or a folder), you should be able to access the Application panel within the Show Info window. This is used to configure the applications that open certain types of documents on the system. Unlike previous versions of Mac OS, which relied on a hidden creator and file type, Mac OS X can also use file extensions or creator/file-type resources. If you download a file from a non-Mac OS X system, your computer might not realize what it needs to do to open the file. The Open with application panel, shown in Figure 4.23, lets you configure how the system reacts. To use the panel, select a file, open the Show Info window, and choose Open with application from the window's pop-up menu.

Figure 4.23 The Open with application panel lets you choose what application will read a particular file or type of file.

The default application name is shown alongside a pop-up menu containing alternative application choices. Click and hold the application icon in the window to display options and make a selection. If the application you want to use isn't shown, choose Other, and then use the standard Mac OS X file dialog to browse to the application you want to use.

If you have a group of files that you'd like to open with a given application, you can select the entire group, and then click Change All to set the application for all of them at once. This beats selecting each file and making the setting individually.

Languages

If you have an application selected, you might be able to choose Languages from the Show Info pop-up menu. Applications can have multiple internal resources that adjust the application to the appropriate system conditions—the Language panel allows you to adjust the language resources used by an application.

In early versions of the Mac OS, resources were contained within a file's resource fork. Unfortunately, resource forks are unique to the Mac file system. To store Mac files and applications on a non-Mac file system, various contortions had to be made. Typically, the data portion of an application would be stored like a normal file, while the resource fork would be converted to a second invisible file that was stored elsewhere.

Although this has worked for many years, it requires computers that interact with Mac files to understand the unusual quality of Mac files. In Mac OS X, files can still have resources, but they have been bundled in an entirely new way. First introduced in Mac OS 9, the Mac OS now supports a new concept called a package. A package is nothing more than a folder structure that appears to the user to be a single file. In reality, a package is a folder that contains individual files for all the resources it might need. Other operating systems need not understand the specifics of the Mac file system to store package files. The Languages panel, shown in Figure 4.24, displays the language resources available for each application, allowing a user to immediately localize software with the appropriately packaged resources. The Add and Remove buttons can be used to add additional language resources to the software.

Figure 4.24 Language resources can be examined in this view.

Privileges

Mac OS X enables you to take control over who can view your files. Without your password (or the system administrator [root] password), other users can be completely restricted from accessing your folders and files. Choose the Privileges panel of the Show Info window after selecting the file or folder you want to adjust. Your screen should look similar to Figure 4.25.

Figure 4.25 File and folder permissions can be set in the Privileges panel.

As discussed in Chapter 3, there are three levels of access you can adjust:

• Owner— The person who owns a file. Most files on a default Mac OS X installation are owned by a system user. You own files that you create.
• Group — The default OS X group is Staff, and all members of the operating system are part of the Staff group. Chapter 24, "User Management," discusses the creation of additional groups.
• Everybody — Users who are not the owner and not part of the default group. Because all Mac OS X users are part of the Staff group, you shouldn't have to enable access to everybody else unless you are creating a customized, multi-group system.

For each of these levels of access, there are multiple user rights. Adjusting these rights controls what the owner, group, and everyone else can do to a file or folder:

• Read Only— The file or folder can be read but not modified in any way.
• Write Only (Drop Box)— Available only as an option for folders, write only access allows users to add files to a folder, but not to read what is inside the folder.
• Read & Write— The file or folder can be read, written to, or deleted.
• None— The file or folder may not be read, written to, deleted, or modified in any way.

When viewing the file information for a folder, the Privileges window will also show a Copy button that will copy all the access rights on the folder to the files underneath. Just because a folder does not have read permissions doesn't mean the files inside the folder can't be read or modified unless they have the same permissions.

A final setting exists for storage volumes. If a disk is selected while viewing privilege information, an "ignore privileges on this volume" check box will appear. Clicking this box will cause the volume to appear as wide open to the operating system. Users can modify anything on the drive—just as in previous versions of the Mac OS. Activating this setting is not recommended.

Preview

If a QuickTime-recognized document is selected, there will be another available Show Info option: Preview. Preview lets you quickly examine the contents of a wide variety of media files including MP3s, CD audio tracks (aiff), JPEGs, GIFs, TIFFs, PDFs, and many, many more.

If you are previewing a video or audio track, the QuickTime player control will appear and enable you to play the contents of the file. This is a great way to play your CDs or listen to MP3s without starting up a copy of iTunes. Figure 4.26 shows a CD audio track being played in the Preview panel.

Figure 4.26 Play your CD tracks using the Finder's Show Info Preview panel.

Share This