Conventions

The conventions in this book are pretty simple. All function names, file names, commands, and source code listings use a monospace font-for exam- ple, "use the gnome_init( ) function in the file gnome-libs/libgnomeui/ gnome-init.c." In some cases, a software package is distributed under the same name as its primary executable. To differentiate between the package and the tool, the package name will appear in normal roman typeface, and the tool name in Courier as always. Thus we might find the following statement: "The autoconf package contains the autoconf tool." The build tools in Chapter 3 are particularly guilty of this ambiguity.

Shell interactions are also in monospace. Commands you type in are pref- aced with a "$" prompt and appear in bold (although you shouldn't actually type in the "$"). The output of the command appears in nonbold after the com- mand. In the interest of clarity, certain repetitive output has been omitted. The output on your system may be different from what appears in the book. In the example that follows, the gnome-config command would obviously print out the version of your own GNOME installation.

$ gnome-config --version
gnome-libs 1.2.0