Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Icon Names

Every document, program, folder, and disk on your Mac is represented by an icon: a colorful little picture that you can move, copy, or double-click to open. In Mac OS X, icons look more like photos than cartoons, and you can scale them to practically any size.

A Mac OS X icon’s name can have up to 255 letters and spaces. If you’re accustomed to the 31-character limit of Mac OS 9, that’s quite a luxurious ceiling.

NOSTALGIA CORNER Printing a Window—or a List of Files

Hey, in Mac OS 9, I could print a Finder window. I’d get a neat list of the files, which I could use as a label for a CD I was going to burn, or whatever. How do I print a Finder window in Mac OS X?

It’s easy enough to make a list of files for printing. Once the window is open on your screen, choose Edit→Select All. Choose Edit→Copy. Now switch to a word processor (or TextEdit) and paste. You get a tidy list of all the files in that window, ready to format and print.

This simple file name list still isn’t the same as printing a window, that’s true; you don’t get the status bar showing how many items are on the disk, and how full the disk is. For that purpose, you can always make a screenshot of the window (Section 13.11), and print that.

Of course, that technique’s no good if the list of files is taller than the window itself.

Really, what you want is Print Window, a handy shareware program dedicated to printing out your Finder windows, without any of these workarounds or limitations. You can download it from the ...