Switcher Questions

[Ross Henderson]

Hi. I'm new to the Mac OS and seeing as I got very quick answers here before, I thought I would ask about a few things bugging me.

I've changed a lot of the systems resources to the way I like them (like changing the word airport to wireless in the Localizable.strings and dock pinning in the property lists.) What format are they in however, because so far I've only been able to open them with Property List Editor not with any other application.

How do I change/move the apple logo from the top panel? Is there a PNG or PDF somewhere? (I'd like to replace it with a different image.)

How do I remove the dock translucency so that it's completely transparent. I ask because it stands out too much on very dark backgrounds. I've seen 'ClearDock' but it seems like a hack and workaround, and I don't want to use Transparent Dock as it seems a little too much.

When running Apple's X11 in rootless mode, the windows bury themselves under aqua windows and have to be double clicked to bring them to the front. Is there an option to stop this and make them behave the same as other windows?

I work in a lower privileged account. I have another account with admin privileges. Is there any way to install applications with superuser privileges when dragging applications to the applications folder? Because after authenticating as an admin it uses the standard users privileges and when admin it uses the admin privileges.

I prefer to do things manually instead of downloading a shareware application or using hacks/workarounds. Perhaps there is a site you can point me to that tells me how to edit all the inner working of the OS or an package on fink that helps me?

Thanks in advance, Ross.

 

[timmac]

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I hope you get one; "mac people" tend to not do things manually like you want to do, so it may take a while for someone with the expertise you require to respond.

In my opinion, there tend to be more "techies" that hang out at the "all things mac" forum on dslreports.com and in the forums at macosxhints.com. You may want to try your questions there too.

 

[dpaanlka]

You want to remove the Apple logo from the Apple menu? Or are you talking about something else.

Why would you want to do that?

 

[motulist]

This isn't quite the info you're looking for, but the best advice I can give you is that you should hold your horses a little bit. I can tell that you're a pretty technically advanced person, but I wouldn't go around tinkering with stuff that isn't meant to be tinkered with unless there's a really good reason. Every modification you make to the system introduces an element of uncertainty that could lead to instability, possibly in ways that you wouldn't be able to tell were caused by the system mod.

For instance, lets say you replace the apple logo. At some point many months from now you may find that the Finder starts to randomly crash for no reason. Well it might turn out that the image file you put in its place was a couple of rows smaller than the original. Months later when a rarely used background task is activated it keeps trying to update the menu bar but everything comes out misaligned so the Finder continuously crashes and relaunches. But you'd have no way to tell that the system mod you made months ago was the culprit of this new problem. This is just a fictional example, but things like this really could happen. So if you care about system stability you might not want to mod your system.

 

[Ross Henderson]

Thank you for your replies. I have weighed the advantages and disadvantages of customising what is for the most part a totally closed source OS and it's clear, considering the packages structure of the applications and system folder that they were not made with customisation in mind.

However, does anyone have any ideas as to how I would go about implimenting these things? I have the nessesary plans in place, should anything go wrong and would like to see what it's capable of.

In addition I believe installing applications properly to be a strenghtening factor. Apparently my X11 problem is a bug. I have found the solution to be pressing F10 when X11 is selected in the dock. This is far from ideal but I guess theres nothing I can do.

By the way macosxhints.com is a great site thank you.