Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Saving and Loading Terminals

After you set up a Terminal window and shell via the Terminal Inspector window (see "The Terminal Inspector" later in this chapter), you have two ways to save these settings for future Terminal sessions: either click the “Use Settings as Defaults” button to make them the Terminal applications’ overall default settings, or save the front-most window’s settings to a file through File→Save (-S). This creates a .term file that stores all the window’s settings. (The .term file uses the standard XML property list format described in the section "Property Lists" in Chapter 13, so you can manually browse these files if you wish.) It’s most convenient to save .term files in ~/Library/Application Support/Terminal, a directory you might need to create initially. You can then access any .term files placed in that directory by choosing one from the File → Library menu. You can also open .term files using the File → Open (-O) menu command.

Tip

One useful utility for managing .term files is Terminal Pal from Freshly Squeezed Software (http://freshsqueeze.com/products/freeware/). When installed, Terminal Pal provides quick access to .term files you’ve saved, allowing you to quickly launch Terminal windows with different settings.

As Figure 3-5 shows, the dialog has an extra ...