<meta http-equiv="Last-Modified" content="Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:00:00 CEST" />
<meta name="AUTHOR" content="Marcel Bresink" />
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<h1>TinkerTool: Frequently
Asked Questions </h1>
<h2>What is TinkerTool?</h2>
<p>TinkerTool is an application which gives you access to additional preference
settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features
in the operating system and in some of the applications that come with the
system.</p>
<p>TinkerTool does not provide any features itself. Its single task is to give
you an extended interface to your personal preference settings. The tool will
never change anything in the operating system. For this reason, the integrity
of your system is not put at risk. All settings are restricted to the user
accounts that launch TinkerTool. If you have multiple user accounts on your
computer, settings of different users will not affect each other.</p>
<p>The feature set of Mac OS X varies greatly between different operating system
versions. For this reason, TinkerTool must automatically adapt to the system
it is running on. The settings available in each system version are listed <a href="http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html">at
the download page</a>.</p>
<p> When you detect a preference setting that causes a compatibility problem
with a third-party application, you can simply reset this or all preferences
to their previous values. </p>
<h2>Can I have a manual for TinkerTool?</h2>
<p>There is no documentation other than this English FAQ list. Because TinkerTool
doesn't provide any features, there is not much that could be documented. The
tool has a single function: If you click on setting "X", TinkerTool
will change your personal preference setting "X". Apple may change
the meaning of setting "X" any time at their own discretion, so we
have absolutely no influence on the effects each setting may achieve.</p>
<h2>Is TinkerTool compatible with Mac OS X Server?</h2>
<p>Yes, there is no difference between Mac OS X and the corresponding version
of Mac OS X Server. The Server version only comes with additional administration
and service software. So TinkerTool works the same on both system versions.</p>
<h2>Could you please add feature "X" to TinkerTool?</h2>
<p>In most cases, the answer is no. TinkerTool does not provide any features,
so it cannot add any. The features you are seeing are provided by Mac OS X
and controlled by Apple. TinkerTool is only a helper application to activate
them.</p>
<p>However, if you know an additional built-in preference setting neither accessible
in System Preferences nor in TinkerTool, suggestions are welcome. Note that
we sometimes have to deny integration of a preference setting because the setting
may have a negative effect on some applications (which is the reason why Apple
did not make access to this setting publicly available).</p>
<h2>Can the option "Finder: Disable Desktop features" have negative side effects?</h2>
<p>Yes. Unfortunately, the Finder of certain versions of Mac OS X 10.4.x "Tiger"
and Mac OS X 10.3.x "Panther" might crash when it is quit if the
option "Disable
Desktop features" has been activated. If you are affected by this problem,
uncheck the option and restart the Finder. This will resolve the issue. Apple
may fix this problem in future versions of the Finder.</p>
<h2>Are there alternative ways to restart the Finder?</h2>
<p>Yes, in up-to-date versions of Mac OS X, you can hold down the "alt" key while
right-clicking the Finder icon in the Dock. An item to restart the Finder
will be displayed in the context menu.</p>
<h2>There are .DS_Store files everywhere! Has TinkerTool destroyed my system?</h2>
<p>No, you just have enabled the Finder's "show all files" option with
TinkerTool. The .DS_Store files are created by the Finder during its normal
course of operation but they are invisible by default. The Finder will automatically
put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used
to save the positions of icons, the size of the respective Finder window, the
window's background, and many more view options. While professional users consider
the .DS_Store files to be a design flaw of the Mac OS X Finder, a mechanism
like this is necessary when opening Finder windows for exchangeable disk media
to give former users of the classic Mac OS the same user experience they had
in previous operating system versions. If you don't like to see the .DS_Store
files, disable the "show all files" option in TinkerTool, or replace
the Finder by a better file management application.</p>
<h2>Why can't TinkerTool change the font of the Finder, the Dock, or the menu
bar?</h2>
<p>The Finder, the Dock, and the menu bar are using the Carbon framework. Carbon
emulates the legacy technologies of the classic Mac OS which did not have a
feature allowing users to change their font preferences. For this reason these
components will ignore font settings. You can use applications that take advantage
of the old "theme" technology to modify the look of Carbon applications.
Note that most of those applications are not really compatible with Mac OS
X. They basically destroy the graphics resources for the operating system and
replace them with their own versions. The changes are applied to the whole
system, not one particular user, and sometimes the modifications don't survive
system updates.</p>
<h2>The minimum font size setting does not seem to work for Safari. Can you fix
this?</h2>
<p>The setting does work but Safari does not respect this setting if the displayed
document page is using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It is not possible to
change this.</p>
<h2>Can I completely disable font smoothing in Panther or Tiger?</h2>
<p>No and yes. Although these operating systems do not support a feature to disable
font smoothing generally, you can use the simple trick to set a very high size
limit for the smoothing of fonts. If you set the limit to 144 points, basically
all fonts in the user interface will no longer be smoothed. </p>
<h2>Why can't I disable font smoothing for the standard font of the Mac OS X
user interface?</h2>
<p>Depending on operating system version, Mac OS X may or may not be capable
of changing font smoothing settings for the font "Lucida Grande",
the default font used in most Mac OS X dialog windows. This problem is not
restricted to TinkerTool: Apple's original System Preferences application shows
the same problem if you are changing the font smoothing limit in the Appearance
preference pane. We made Apple aware of this issue, but they don't plan to
fix it. </p>
<h2>All icons in the Finder become gray when I enable the Finder option "Show
hidden and system files" using Tiger. Is this normal?</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, this is a known bug in all versions of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".
We made Apple aware of this problem and they fixed it in Mac OS X Leopard.</p>
<h2>How can I drag Dashboard widgets to my Desktop?</h2>
<p>To successfully drag a widget to your Desktop please use the following detailed
instructions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Make sure the option "Dashboard: Enable Dashboard developer mode" is
checked in the "General" pane of TinkerTool.</li>
<li>Open Dashboard. If you haven't changed the default keyboard settings, this
is done by pressing the F12 key.</li>
<li>Select the widget you want to have on your Desktop. Click in the widget
and keep the mouse button pressed.</li>
<li>While the mouse button is still hold down, move the mouse slowly and close
Dashboard (by pressing F12 again) at the same time.</li>
</ol>
<p>The standard widgets will disappear but the widget you are moving will stay
on screen. When you release the mouse button you can use the widget like a
normal application. To remove the widget
from your Desktop, hold down the "alt" key and move the mouse cursor onto the
widget. A close button will appear which allows you to remove the widget. </p>
<h2>How do I work with the Shortcuts pane in Panther?</h2>
<p>Let's say you have an application that is missing a keyboard shortcut for
a menu item, but you use that menu item very often and would like to define
a shortcut for it. For example, Internet Explorer is missing the usual "Apple+Shift+P" shortcut
for "File > Page Setup...". In this case:</p>
<ol>
<li>Press the "add new shortcut" button in TinkerTool.</li>
<li>Enter "Page Setup..." into the field "For all menu items
titled:"</li>
<li>Enter "P" at "Key:", select the checkmark with the "shift" symbol,
and deselect the "ctrl" symbol at "Modifier Keys".</li>
<li>Press the "Apply" button.</li>
<li>Launch Internet Explorer. It should now have a new shortcut at the "File > Page
Setup..." menu item.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Can I use TinkerTool to let Mac OS X create files with less strict permission
settings (applies to Panther and Tiger only)?</h2>
<p>Yes and no. In general, each application has to decide for itself which permissions
to set when creating new files or folders. It is not possible to force a general
default setting for all new objects. (This would create serious security holes
in the operating system and would make Mac OS X unusable.)</p>
<p>However, many applications don't care about permission settings when creating
new files. In this case, Mac OS X applies a default security restriction to
the permission settings. While it is not possible to set a default for the
permission settings themselves,<strong> it is possible to set a default for
the security restrictions that are applied to the permission settings if the
application doesn't set stricter permissions.</strong></p>
<p>By default, Mac OS X will not allow that new objects have write permission
for the owning group and other users. (Typical permissions are "owner:
read & write", "group: read", "others: read".)
You can for example relax this strict setting, removing the "don't allow
write permission for the group" default. This is possible with TinkerTool's
Permissions pane, available in Mac OS X 10.3 and higher: Remove the checkmark
at "Group / Write file: Don't allow", log out, and log in.</p>
<p>If you apply this change, all applications launched via the graphical user
interface of this user account will grant write permission to the group, unless
an application itself decides not to grant write permission. In most applications,
files will now be created with the setting "owner: read & write", "group:
read & write", "others: read").</p>
<p>This preference has no effect on applications launched via a Terminal shell
which includes the X Window environment in most configurations. These environments
can use the Unix "umask" setting of the shell to achieve the same
effect.</p>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> Files created by an AFP (AppleShare) or SMB/CIFS (Windows)
file server may override this default mechanism because the servers can be
instructed to establish their own security policy. Refer to the file server
documentation for more information.</p>
<h2>I used a previous version of TinkerTool which was integrated in System Preferences.
How can I remove the icon of the old version from System Preferences?</h2>
<p>Just download the application "TinkerTool 2 Uninstall" and double-click
its icon. The application is available at <a href="http://www.bresink.com/Downloads/TT2Uninstall.dmg.gz">http://www.bresink.com/Downloads/TT2Uninstall.dmg.gz</a>.</p>
<h2>What is the difference between TinkerTool and TinkerTool System?</h2>
<p>Both applications share the same user interface and internal technologies.
However, the features and target group of the two applications are very different:
TinkerTool is a utility that allows you to set personal preference settings
Apple has built into Mac OS X. TinkerTool is not capable of changing any system
settings or other settings that may affect more than your private user account.
For this reason, you don't need administrative permission to use TinkerTool.
The tool can be used in professional networks where you have limited access,
for example students working with the campus network.</p>
<p>TinkerTool System on the other hand is directed to system administrators,
consultants or experienced users that need to change and optimize operating
system settings. This will affect all users that share a computer. Only user
accounts with administrative permission can use TinkerTool System, Mac OS X
does not allow access by standard users.</p>
<p>The tools do not share any duplicate settings or features. They complement
one another, to have the full feature set you'll need both applications. It
is not planned to offer the system tool in other languages than English and
German.</p>
<p>Because TinkerTool System can be used (or misused) to change important operating
system settings, we expect many support requests and technical questions. To
guarantee this necessary support, TinkerTool System cannot be distributed for
free.</p>
<h2>How can I remove TinkerTool?</h2>
<p>Just drag the application to the trash. Because TinkerTool doesn't install
or change anything in the operating system, that's all. You might consider
resetting Mac OS X's preferences you have changed via TinkerTool
to the pre-installation state before removing the tool. (See the next item.)</p>
<h2>I used TinkerTool for a while, then I deleted it. But all of its settings
are still effective, what should I do?</h2>
<p>As mentioned above, TinkerTool just changes user preference settings of Mac
OS X. Applications will respect their settings no matter if TinkerTool is on
your disk or not. If you want to reset your configuration, just open the Reset
pane in TinkerTool, choose one of the reset buttons, log out and log in.</p>
<h2>Why did Apple include so many hidden features in Mac OS X?</h2>
<p>Of course we cannot officially speak for Apple, but there are several reasons
why some built-in preference settings of Mac OS X are usually kept under the
hood:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Settings for professional users:</strong> Some settings, e.g. the
preference to show hidden and system files in the Finder, are official features
of Mac OS X but Apple intentionally does not disclose them to normal end
users. Those features are documented to developers or to professional users
which read the technical manuals of Mac OS X. This way Apple can keep the
user interface simple, at the same time not excluding particular user groups
from using advanced features.<br />
Especially in professional networks, system
administrators even don't like the graphical user interface but prefer shell
scripts and the Terminal command-line. So there are also cases where Apple
considers it too costly to develop a graphical user interface, thinking that
most users would not use it.</li>
<li><strong>OPENSTEP settings untouched by Apple:</strong> Technically seen,
Mac OS X is not a successor of Mac OS but of NeXT's operating system "OPENSTEP
for Mach".
This operating system contained several features which are still part of
Mac OS X. In some cases, Apple does not want to touch
some of the old features, because this could have the risk of unwanted side
effects. For this reason, these functions have never been deactivated but
are "sleeping" in
the OS.</li>
<li><strong>Features hidden for design and marketing reasons:</strong> System
developers usually think far ahead while designing their applications. For
this reason they prepare or implement many features without a direct order.
In some cases they "play" with some features or need them
for temporary testing purposes. However, superiors or the marketing division
might later decide that a feature is "too advanced", "not
needed by most users", or "doesn't look right". Because it
can be very expensive and time-consuming to remove program code, those functions
are only deactivated, not deleted, and we have another "sleeping" feature.</li>
</ol>
<p>This list of reasons is not necessarily complete. The strategy of hiding built-in
features is not unusual, you can see the same on other operating systems as
well. For example, Microsoft® has a tool called "Tweak UI" which
does a similar job on MS-Windows® as TinkerTool does on Mac OS X.</p>
