Apple Macintosh Encyclopedia

Book excerpt: The Apple Macintosh Encyclopedia provides easily accessible, brief and understandable information on the topics that you are most likely to have questions about. We have carefully digested the manuals, books, magazine articles, and other information sources for the Macintosh. These, combined with our own experience in using the Macintosh and other personal computers, have been integrated into an alphabetical sequence of short entries in the style of an encyclopedia. The goal is to provide concise, useful and easy-to-understand information on a particular topic that is quickly accessible when you need it. Much of the information in the entries is not contained in the manuals provided with the Macintosh and various software products. For example, notice the discussion, under WIDTH, of the "deferred" nature of this command when used with a device name, the discussion of the colon (:) in Multiplan for ranges, or Saving, Problems With. These topics are omitted or inadequately covered in the standard manuals. The Macintosh is the first truly visual computer. In keeping with the highly visual nature of using the Macintosh, we have provided over 100 illustrations. Each shows exactly what you will see on the screen when exploring topics discussed in the text. The Macintosh Encyclopedia opens with a visual guide to icons, and remains highly visual in orientation throughout the text.