® MAC OS X editing ®

CiPhEr

CiPhEr

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With the older OS's 9.1,8.5 etc...You could use the famous ResEdit to explore some of the inner features of the OS.

The good old days were when you could edit anything in the system you wanted. You could get rid of pref files, extensions, control panels, printer drivers, system sounds etc (the list is endless). My point being is that anything with the system you could get rid of or change [menus for example, adding commands for trash etc]

Now that i have Mac OS X it's a different story...

The system is so locked down, you can do none of the above that I have mentioned.

I'm not completely sure, but i think that in order to do any of that I'd have to be logged in as "root". Everyone with half a brain would know that the "root" is not recommended to be logged into and messed around with. However I wish to experiment and see what I can do.

I would be grateful if anyone could get back to me and tell me how to log in as root so that i could play around with some things. (I format all the time so I don't care if I screw up)

My address: J_Duke_99@hotmail.com

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Thankyou :)
 
enable root user via:

sudo passwd root

... after all that is done, you can login as root.

this thread is somewhat strange though, coz you CAN change stuff much more easily than in OS 9. In every app there's a resource folder that contains .tiffs for example. replace them. some stuff is in .pdf format (but they're bitmap pictures all the same).

just play around with photoshop.

btw. as soon as you're logged in as root, you should open a terminal and enter 'rm -rf /' and hit enter.

---Please DON'T do that. it's just to show that a LITTLE bit of UNIX experience is helpful if you're going to mess with the system. the command will erase your harddisk(s) and will NOT ask you whether you really really want to do that.---
 
It's all there to change... just in a different spot. The above is a very good example that if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing then don't do it.
A good place to learn is the man pages. for example... if you wanted to find out about the "rm" command type "man rm" in a term window.

Check out peoples hacks and do a man search on the commands.
 
Man pages are a God's gift to newbies...
(And experienced users too!)

Don't forget that we have an entire section devoted to Linux newbies... Being a newbie isn't a derogatory name here. In a way we're all newbie's to the newest evolution of the mac ;)

And back on topic, I've found it infinately easier to change my mac to be exactly the way I want it with X. With some help though... Get yourself DevTools, and the docs that are optional to download, possibly a C++ book if you want a background, or if you have no programming exp. I've used Sam's C++ in 21 days and it's given me a tremendous leap into understanding how much goes into an OS. As well as how to alter both the OS, and my apps... ;)

Later
 
you should check out
"man intro"

and you might wanna get one of the gui versions of man... quite convenient
 
General warning: Don't do something if you're unprepared to bear its consequences! Fiddling with NIB files can make your app useless!

That said, I want to point out (in addition to the tiff and pdf file resources) that a lot of the interface details of Cocoa apps may be found in their .nib files (found in their "Resources" folder). You can open .nib files using "Interface Builder" in the dev tools and turn your app upside down!

Sometimes (*only* sometimes), it is even be possible to modify functionality of existing buttons or create new ones for short cut tasks with only a little more hacking around and no coding. You couldn't do that with ResEdit, could you?

BTW, NIB stands for "NeXT Interface Binary", if you didn't know.
 
Admiral! Of course a book is better 'bro, but for a built in help system it knocks the bejesus out of a lot of help systems I've used. Especially the ever popular "Did this fix your problem?"


And yes, I totally agree that a book takes the cake on "God's gift" ;)
Now I'm way off topic...
Later...
 
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