Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

30
CHAPTER 2 THE FILE SYSTEM
Table 2-1. Continued
Folder Name Purpose
Caches The Caches folder exists in each of the Library folders. This is where the
system or an application may store data that it refers to often—rather then
reforming the data from scratch, it can use the data from the cache, saving
time and system resources. While some people routinely clean out their
Caches folders since the data there will be restored, some of the data stored
there could take some time and resources to regenerate (and it will be
regenerated), so there isn’t much use in doing this, except for deleting
caches for applications that no longer exist on your system.
Calendars This folder, located in ~/Library/, is where calendar information is stored.
This is mostly used by iCal, but the info is available to other apps that may
utilize iCal information.
CFMSupport This folder contains shared libraries that are required for the system and
certain apps. The CFMSupport folders in general should be left alone unless
you get specific instructions to add or remove an item.
ColorPickers The ColorPickers folders are where color picker plug-ins go. Color pickers
are the various color selection windows available to you when an Aqua
application allows you to select a color. Leopard includes a few different
color picker plug-ins: Color Wheel, Color Sliders, Color Palettes, Image
Palettes, and Crayons. Other third-party color pickers are available for
increased functionality or personal taste.
ColorSync The ColorSync Library folders contain ColorSync profiles and support files.
ColorSync is a Macintosh technology that allows color devices (monitors,
printers, scanners, digital cameras, etc.) to be profiled so that color remains
consistent from one device to another.
Components Components are application plug-ins that provide useful features to the
system and other applications.
Compositions Items in the Compositions folder are movies or Quartz Composer files that
provide animated backgrounds in applications like Photo Booth and iChat. In
general, if you wish to add additional files for this purpose, you would create
and add them to ~/Library/Compositions to make them available for you to
use.
Contextual Menu Items The items in the Contextual Menu Items folder are contextual menu plug-ins.
These provide additional menu items for the contextual pop-up menus you
get when you right-click (or Ctrl-click) Finder items.
CoreServices The CoreServices folder, which resides in /System/Library, contains a
number of interesting utility applications that are used by the system. Things
like the Dock, the Finder, and even Spotlight are in here (yes, they are all just
individual applications). Obviously, it would be strongly encouraged not to
remove any of these items.
Cookies The Cookies folder in ~/Library/ is where Safari (and perhaps other web
browsers and WebKit-enabled applications) store cookies that are presented
from web sites. The proper way to manage the contents of this folder is
through Safari (the Show Cookies button in Safari’s Security Preferences).
Documentation This is where many applications store their documentation files, including the
interactive help documents.