AppleSauce, December 2009 - South Australian Apple Users' Club

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The X Lex... Punctuate! Sharon Zardetto and Andy Baird The majority of these entries is about punctuation symbols that aren’t even used for punctuation, but for special purposes on the Mac. . Sure, it’s a period for the end of sentences, but it’s also a divider in URLs such as http://www.tidbits.com/ and in email addresses such as tc-comments@tidbits. com, where it’s pronounced dot. A dot also appears in IP addresses such as 123.231.5.0 where it’s also pronounced dot except when the cognoscenti use just a brief pause (the way you don’t say the separators in 0419 823 738, but speak in the rhythm of a phone number). The period used in software version numbers is pronounced point: Mac OS X 10.5 is “ten point five” and 10.5.1 is “ten point five point one.” But this period can also be silent: “tenfive” and “ten-five-one.” / A forward slash; on the U.S. keyboard, it’s on the same key as the question mark. It’s also a plain ol’ slash, so “http://” is said “http colon slash slash.” Please see backslash, immediately below — because a forward slash is not a Monthly excerpts for MUGs from Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon backslash! The slash is also used to separate folders in a pathname such as /System/Library/Fonts. A slash at the beginning of a path, as in that example, refers to the root level of your boot volume. \ A backslash; on the US keyboard, it’s on the same key as the vertical line (sometimes called a pipe). When someone says “slash,” this is not the character they’re referring to — or, at least, it shouldn’t be, and you can tell them so! ~ A tilde, an accent mark, but a character with a special use in Unix, and therefore in Mac OS X: it’s a shorthand reference to the user’s home folder. So, ~/Library/Fonts represents the path /Users/yourUserName/ Library/Fonts. … The ellipsis, used to indicate missing information in a quotation or to indicate a pause in speech or the trailing off of a thought… what was I saying? Oh, yes… the ellipsis is not three periods, typographically, because the dots in the ellipsis are usually much closer together, and often smaller than periods in the same font: (…) versus (...). The ellipsis is a special character available in all your fonts: type Option-Semicolon, which is easy to remember because of all the dots on that key. Most word processors offer automatic substitution, so you can type three periods and wind up with the ellipsis. (Which made it difficult for me to type those three periods in the example in the previous paragraph….) Note that, as in the last statement, a sentence that ends with an ellipsis still gets a period. An ellipsis after a command in a menu or button indicates that a dialog is coming before the command can be executed. If you add a keyboard shortcut through the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane for a menu command that has an ellipsis, you must type this special character, and not three periods, or the shortcut won’t work. curly quotes Curved quotation marks (“”), also known as typesetter’s quotes; generally refers to the curly apostrophe and single quote marks (‘’), too. You can type the double quotes with Option-[ and Option-Shift-[ and the single quotes with Option-] and Option-Shift-]. If November 2009 AppleSauce Page 6 Contents
Punctuate! you don’t use curly quotes and instead just type using the apostrophe key, you’re not really typing what’s referred to as straight quotes; you’re using foot and inch marks, as in 5'2". Nearly every program that handles formatted text lets you turn on an option for automatic curly-quote substitution when you type a straight quote or apostrophe from the apostrophe key, a feature called smart quotes — which has led many people to call the curly characters themselves by that name. Curly, straight — it’s not always just about looks. These are different characters, and in some cases are not interchangeable: in Terminal, and in most places where you’re programming or scripting (in FileMaker, for instance), you need the straight quotes, and not the curly ones. Guest presenter at the November meeting was Ian Hardwick of InkJet City . Here, he and Grant Ward show a panorama printed by an inkjet printer. © Sharon Zardetto and Andy Baird. Reprinted with permission. Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon is an ebook available at . User-group member discount, 10% on all Take Control titles: coupon code CPN31208MUG. Excerpt files for user group publications: . Queries: xlex@33thingsbooks.com. Email Sharon (sharonLex@33thingsbooks.com) or Andy (Andy@33thingsbooks.com) about the Lexicon. 33 Things books The latest edition of Minifesto: Time Machine by Sharon Zardetto has been posted on the 33thingsbooks.com site . This 1.6 version has been updated to cover minor changes under Snow Leopard. A 40-page excerpt covering buying and formatting a hard drive for Time Machine is free. A new book, 33 Things to Customize OS X: Snow Leopard Edition, has just been posted on the site. A 10% discount is available to all user group members. November 2009 AppleSauce Page 7 Contents
Page 2 and 3: Contents November 2009 AppleSauce t
Page 4 and 5: Presidential keyboard Grant Ward An
Page 8 and 9: Free software... Macworld disc of t
Page 10 and 11: Review... New from Macworld Total S
Page 12 and 13: Musings... ‘Interoperability is k
Page 14 and 15: Why email remains the king of Inter
Page 16 and 17: Overview... Tag, you’re in 2D! Gl
Page 18 and 19: Tag, you’re in 2D! developments i
Page 20 and 21: Musings... The view from BC Mike Mi
Page 22 and 23: Links... The Web page Next year, 20
Page 24 and 25: Incoherent comment... Computing at
Page 26: ‘The fine print...’ South Austr

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