Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

Gray vs. Black Commands

In a list of menu commands, some commands are in black letters and some commands are in gray. When a command is gray, it means that particular command is not available at that moment.

The most common reason a command is unavailable is that you did not select something before you went to the menu. For instance, you cannot choose “Open” from the File menu until you select a disk or file as the item to be opened. You cannot “Copy” text unless you first select the text you want to copy. (To select text, press-and-drag over it; to select an object, click once on it.)

Some commands are gray; some are black. In this example,“Cut” and “Copy” are gray because there is no text selected to cut or copy. If nothing is selected, ...