Conventions Used
This document uses the following conventions to alert you to especially important categories of information.Quick Reference Tags
The following tags appear underneath section headings in this document. They are provided to alert you to how a given function, type, resource, or constant has been affected by Mac OS 8, Appearance, or contextual menus.NEW WITH . . .
Functions, resources, types, and constants that have been introduced with Mac OS 8, Appearance, or contextual menus.
- IMPORTANT
- Many of the Toolbox functions discussed are dependent upon the presence of the Appearance Manager. Unless otherwise specified, it is assumed that any function described as "New With the Appearance Manager" depends upon the availability of the Appearance Manager and that you should check for the presence of the Appearance Manager before calling that function. See the chapter "Appearance Manager Reference" for details on using Gestalt selector constants to determine whether the Appearance Manager is present and its version, if so.
CHANGED WITH . . .
Functions, resources, types, and constants that have been changed, but are still used. The changes will be discussed in the main body of the text, and the functionality on systems lacking Mac OS 8, Appearance, or contextual menus will be summarized at the end of the description.
NOT RECOMMENDED WITH . . .
Functions, resources, types, and constants that are not recommended to be used with Mac OS 8, Appearance, or contextual menus. Alternate recommendations are presented in lieu of the description.Special Fonts
All code listings, reserved words, and names of actual data structures, fields, constants, parameters, and functions are shown in Letter Gothic(this is Letter Gothic).Empty Strings
This book occasionally instructs you to provide an empty string in function parameters and resources. How you specify an empty string depends on what language and development environment you are using. In Rez input files and in C, for example, you specify an empty string by two double quotation marks ("").Types of Notes
There are several types of notes used in this document.
- Note
- A note like this contains information that is interesting but possibly not essential to an understanding of the main text.
- IMPORTANT
- A note like this contains information that is essential for an understanding of the main text.
- WARNING
- Warnings like this indicate potential problems that you should be aware of as you design your application. Failure to heed these warnings could result in system crashes or loss of data.
