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Mac OS X Hints - Part VI Softpedia's Tips on how to keep track of things using lists and decode permissions.	By Alex Andreescu, Mac Editor 16th of May 2006, 08:07 GMT Adjust text size:


Lists Unlimited. Whether you need to keep track of things to do or groceries to buy, lists are really useful. That's why it's so handy that Tiger's TextEdit now supports them in Rich Text Format (RTF) mode (Format: Make Rich Text). One quick hidden way to start a list is to press Option-Tab when you're in any line of a Text-Edit document. This transforms that line, as well as any subsequent rows you add, into a hyphen-delimited list entry. As with lists started in the usual manner, tab and shift-tab change the amount of indent for a given row, and you can change the list type by control-clicking on the list and choosing Lists from the pop-up menu. But here's the real trick: the option-tab keyboard shortcut can create lists in any OS X 10.4 application that uses the same text-input routines as TextEdit. That means you can use lists in programs that may not directly support them, including Apple's Stickies app (but not the Stickies widget). Decode File-Mode Code. You don't need a secret decoder ring to understand Unix permissions, but you do need to familiarize yourself with thle file-mode code. You'll see this coded nine-character file-mode section whenever you use Terminal to uncover a file's permissions. The code's three subcolumns correspond to three categories people: owner, group, and everybody else. Within each sequence, three characters describe the read,(dw) write (w), and execute (x) permissions this person or group has for this file or directory. hyphen- means "This person isn't allowed this kind of access." Read Access Read access to a file means that someone can open and read it. (In the case of a program like iChat, the system needs to read the file on your behalf in order to run it.) Read access to a directory (folder), on the other hand, just means that someone using Terminal can see a list of its contents using a command. Write Access Write access to a file means that someone can modify and save changes to it. Write access to a directory means that someone can add, remove, and rename any item the folder contains (but not necessarily the items within subdirectories). Execute Access Execute access when applied to an application, means that someone can run that particular program. (In fact, Unix distinguishes applications from ordinary files by checking the status of this setting.)

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