Inside Macintosh: PowerPC Numerics /

Preface - About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Inside Macintosh uses various conventions to present information. Words that require special treatment appear in specific fonts or font styles. Certain information appears in special formats so that you can scan it quickly.

Special Fonts

All code listings, reserved words, and the names of actual data structures, constants, fields, parameters, and routines are shown in Courier (this is Courier).

Words that appear in boldface are key terms or concepts and are defined in the glossary at the end of this book.

When a word or character appears in italics, it represents a variable that is replaced with a literal value in an actual computation. For example,

$sqrt(x)$

means take the square root of any floating-point value x, such as 1.45 or 2.789.

When a character appears in italics in one of the tables for special cases in Chapters 6, 9, or 10, it represents a nonzero, finite floating-point number.

Types of Notes

There are several types of notes used in Inside Macintosh.

Note

A note like this contains information that is interesting but possibly not essential to an understanding of the main text.

IMPORTANT

A note like this contains information that is essential for an understanding of the main text.

WARNING

Warnings like this indicate potential problems that you should be aware of as you design your application. Failure to heed these warnings could result in system crashes or loss of data.