Inside Macintosh: Processes

Preface - About This Book

Format of a Typical Chapter

Almost all chapters in this book follow a standard structure. For example, the chapter "Process Manager" contains these sections:

• "About the Process Manager." This section provides an overview of the features provided by the Process Manager.
• "Using the Process Manager." This section describes the tasks you can accomplish using the Process Manager. It describes how to use the most common routines, gives related user interface information, provides code samples, and supplies additional information.
• "Process Manager Reference." This section provides a complete reference to the Process Manager by describing the constants, data structures, and routines that it uses. Each routine description also follows a standard format, which gives the routine declaration and description of every parameter of the routine. Some routine descriptions also give additional descriptive information, such as assembly-language information or result codes.
• "Summary of the Process Manager." This section provides the Process Manager's Pascal interface, as well as the C interface, for the constants, data structures, routines, and result codes associated with the Process Manager. It also includes relevant assembly-language interface information.

Some chapters contain additional main sections that provide more detailed discussions of certain topics. For example, in the chapter "Shutdown Manager," the section "The Shutdown Process" describes the process that the Shutdown Manager procedures perform to shut down or restart the system.