Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Terminal Preferences

Like most applications, Terminal has a Preferences command. However, you’ll access most of Terminal’s settings from the Window Settings command (just below Preferences in the menu). If you spend endless hours staring at the Terminal screen, as most Unix junkies do, you’ll eventually be grateful for the preference settings that let you control how Terminal looks and acts.

Most of the options here are self-explanatory, but here are a few worth noting.

Terminal→Preferences

This dialog box offers a couple of advanced features:

• When creating a new Terminal window. As noted in Section 15.1, the default shell for Mac OS X is tcsh, as indicated by /bin/tcsh in the Preferences dialog box. If you, a newly skilled Unix hound, feel ready to switch to a different shell (with the understanding that many of the examples in these chapters work only in tcsh), you can specify its path here. (Don’t forget to click the lower radio button, too.)

• Open a saved .term file. If you choose to use a .term file (see Section 15.6), enter its full path here.

Window Settings

When you choose Terminal→Window Settings, the new Terminal Inspector window appears (Figure 15-8).

Figure 15-8. To access the Terminal Inspector, choose Terminal→Window Settings (or -I). This window is like a preferences dialog ...