Chapter 3
| About the Macintosh Chapter 3 |
Once you've started creating your own documents, it won't be long before you realise you need a proper, organised filing system for them. At its most basic level, the Macintosh has a very simple way of organising things. Items on your hard disk are either files (which could be applications, documents or other miscellaneous items) or containers (in other words, folders). You can put folders within folders to your heart's content, and you can call these folders what you like. And because documents you create can automatically find the application that created them, you can basically put your documents anywhere you like.
Files and documents
But it's as well right now to clear up one possible source of confusion. The term files is a catch-all term to describe anything that's not a folder, basically. A file can be an application (program), it can be data used by the System, it can be information stored by applications for their own needs - and it can be a document. The term document is used in this hook to describe files created by the user - you might have a word processor document, for example, or a database document. All documents are files, but not all files are documents... many applications create files that aren't designed to be seen by the user. These files can contain information on how the application is set up on your Macintosh - so-called Preferences files. Applications can come with a whole host of support files, like dictionaries, additional tools and functions and maybe on-line help. And - importantly - the Macintosh's operating system consists of many files which have to be kept in the right place and left untouched. These are all located in the System Folder, which you should only interfere with once you know what you're doing (see Chapter six).
Although certain files must be kept in certain places (this is usually handled automatically), everything else - your documents and often the applications themselves - can be stored where you like.
Moving things around
You can move files and folders around at will from the Desktop. You've already seen how double-clicking on a folder opens up a window that shows you the contents of that folder. Well you can move any of these contents from one place to another simply by dragging it to its new location.
To do this, first position the pointer over the folder or file you want to move (don't forget you need to click once on that window to make it the active one, if it's not active already). Press down on the mouse button, and the folder/file will highlight (as above). Now, with the mouse button still pressed down, move the pointer to where the folder/file should be moved to - it will take a faint outline of the folder/file with it so that you can gauge the final position.
Then simply let go of the mouse button, and your folder/file will have been moved. Usually, you'll be moving items from one folder to another, but it can be easier to move them to the Desktop first. Or, if you prefer, you can leave things on your Desktop permanently. It makes the Desktop more cluttered, but it also makes commonly-used items easier to find.
How do you create a new folder?
Folders are simple to create. From the Desktop, choose the New Folder option from the File menu. This will create a new folder in the currently active window (or on the Desktop itself if you don't have any windows open). It's as simple as that! The only thing is, the new folder is simply called untitled - how do you change its name?
What's in a name?
As well as being able to move folders and files around, you can also call them what you like - and it's very easy to change a name:
Move the mouse pointer over the name of the object you want to rename and click once (the object will now be highlighted).
If you wait a couple of seconds you'll see the icon change subtly. The label is now surrounded by a border...
...which means you can now start typing in your new name (this must be less than 30 characters in length, but can include spaces).
Once you've typed in the new name, simply click anywhere else on the screen and the new name is saved.
Building an organisation
The Macintosh's operating system offers so much flexibility, that it's hard to know how to start organising your hard disk. The main hard disk folder must contain the System Folder (which you should leave alone), but beyond that, you can do what you like. System 7.5, the latest version of the Mac operating system, and the one supplied with all new machines, comes with two special folders for Documents and Applications. You may see these on the Desktop (remember that they are still stored on the hard disk - they've simply been left out. These are set up so that you know where to put and where to find Documents and Applications respectively.
This is useful for beginners who are still struggling with the basic Mac concepts, but it is a little restrictive. While most of us will probably only have half a dozen or so applications, we may generate dozens - even hundreds - of documents, and clearly some higher level of organisation is needed.
One solution is to create additional folders within the documents folder. You might have different folders for different jobs, or clients or applications. As a freelance writer, you may set up folders for each magazine you do work for, and within these folders are other folders for each issue, or each specific job you undertake. You might like to do something similar, although there are as many ways of organising a hard disk as there are different Macintosh users. In the next chapter, we'll be looking at more ways to organise your Mac.
Other sorts of drive
All of your Macintosh's data is held on its internal hard disk. It gets its name from its construction - a hard disk stores its data on a stack of rigid metal discs, and moving heads read off the data as the discs rotate.
Floppy disks use a similar principle but in a cruder, cheaper form. They contain only a single, flexible disc (hence floppy) in a slim, rigid case.
Hard disks can hold a lot more information than floppy disks. This information capacity is measured in Kilobytes (K) and Megabytes (1000K). A floppy disk can hold approximately 1.4 Megabytes (abbreviated to Mb), while a hard disk can hold between 40Mb (older Macintosh models) and 500Mb or more (newer models).
All Macintoshes are equipped with an internal hard disk, and you can insert floppy disks into them too. You might copy a file to a floppy disk to give it to someone else, for example.
You can both move your files around and duplicate them in new locations. When you drag a file to another location on your hard disk, your Macintosh simply moves it to that new location. If you drag it to a floppy disk, though, being cautious, your Mac copies it over instead of transferring it (you keep the original file on your hard disk). This is an important general principle to remember: when you drag a file within a disk (either a hard disk or floppy disk) it gets moved; when you drag it from one disk to another, it gets copied.
You can make copies of your files on the same disk, however. To do this, select the file by clicking on it once to highlight it and then choose the Duplicate option from the File menu. This will create a duplicate of the file in the same window, which you can rename if you want to.
There is a third sort of disk drive. Although both hard disks and floppy disks store information on a magnetic surface (like audio cassettes), CD-ROMs store information optically (like a CD player). CD-ROMs are a special type of CD which store computer data rather than audio tracks. They have major advantages in computing:
| 1. | They can store vast quantities of information. A CD-ROM can store 650Mb of data - more than most hard disks and 500 times as much as a floppy disk. |
| 2. | They are durable. Although you can't drill holes in them or scrape them across floors, CD-ROMs are pretty resistant to damage providing you handle them carefully. |
| 3. | They are inexpensive: CD-ROMs cost only a few tens of pence to manufacture. It's now possible for software publishers to sell much bigger applications than was practical before and a single CD-ROM is much cheaper to manufacture and distribute than a box full of floppy disks. |
There is one major disadvantage for the end user, though. You can't store any information on a CD-ROM yourself - you can only read it. Data can only be copied to CD-ROMs during a complex and highly-specialised manufacturing process. It is possible to buy CDs and special drives that let you store information of your own, but these are expensive and outside the scope of most users. The fact that CD-ROMs are read-only doesn't matter greatly in the software market-place. They are ideal for multimedia products like talking encyclopaedias and games, and other products that feature animations, video sequences, high-quality sound and speech and special effects. All of these take up vast amounts storage space, and CD-ROM is the only medium which can handle them.
Using other drives
Other drives (like CD-ROMs and floppy disks) work in the same way as your hard disk They have an icon you can double-click on to open a window showing the contents. And you can work down through layers of folders, just as you do with your hard disk.
Your hard disk icon is always visible on your Desktop, but you won't see an icon for a floppy disk or a CD-ROM until you insert one (logically enough). The illustration below shows my main hard disk icon (top), a CD-ROM (many Macs can actually play audio CDs, which is what this is) and a floppy disk (bottom).
You can eject any disk (except your hard disk) by dragging it to the wastebasket. (This doesn't delete the contents of the disk!)
Installing applications
When you buy an application, you'll get a box containing a set of floppy disks, or maybe a CD-ROM. You have to copy the application and its associated files from these on to your hard drive before the application will work. Although you've already looked at how you can drag files from one drive to another, in the case of applications it's not quite that simple.
| 1. | There are many different Macintosh models, and the software publishers need to cater for as many of them as possible. This often means supplying more than one version of some of the files, and files that won't be needed for all machines. |
| 2. | Although applications themselves can usually be stored anywhere you like on your hard disk, many of the files which go with them, and which they rely on, have to go in certain, very specific places. These can include System Extensions (you'll meet those in the chapter on the System), control panels (next chapter) and preferences files (which store set-up details for the application. |
To make life easier for everyone, the software suppliers include an Installer with their application. The installer is a mini-application in itself. You double-click on its icon (the instructions will tell you which disk to find it on) and it checks your Mac hardware to see which files will be needed, then copies the appropriate files to the appropriate location. Very clever.
Once the installation is complete, you may be asked to restart your Macintosh. Don't worry, this is quite common. It simply means that the application has had to install some modifications to your System which will only come into effect if you shut down your machine and then start it up again.
Expert tips
Macintoshes can read PC-formatted disks, but PCs can't read Mac disks. If you need to swap files with a PC-owning colleague, use disks that they have formatted or format them as PC disks yourself. If you have PC Exchange (with System 7.5) you can do this as an option when you select the Erase Disk... command, while if you have Apple File Exchange, launch it and format the disk from there.
SyQuest drives combine bulk external storage with a portable data medium. The 3.5-inch models are more compact, but the 5.25-inch models are the most commonly-used.
If you have a SyQuest drive, get SCSI Probe - if you switch on your SyQuest drive after you start up your Macintosh, you'll probably need SCSI Probe to get your Mac to recognise the drive at all.
G.Mills@compserv.gla.ac.uk