[Naphtali]

I'm an unrepentant OS 9.2.2 user. I'm just beginning to butt against its obsolescence. I have no intention of abandoning OS 9. But I'll need to run two applications in OS X. I want to customize the look and feel of OS X and the applications to emulate my OS 9 and ITS applications/utilities -- which are tricked out to no longer function like any other OS 9.
I own a user's manual for OS X 10.3.9. It doesn't furnish much information pertaining to what's really going on, why, and how to make OS X work MY WAY.
My standards for this sort of manual are: Bob LeVitus' OS 7.5 (.3??) for Dummies, that paid for itself by page three; and Microsoft Office 6's Word Reference Manual -- that I still use for Word 2001.
While I'm not terribly interested in learning command-line interface nuances, I do want to know where OS X puts its bazillions of files and why. A good understanding of permissions and layers of administration is also wanted.
I live about eighty miles from the nearest city (Missoula) where there is a Mac User Group. I know there is an authorized Mac repair shop there, but I do not believe there is a reseller. Whatever knowledge I get, I'll need to get on my own.
Please identify books that will solve my problem.

[albloom]

For reference books, I'd go with David Pogue's "Missing Manual"
series. The Panther and Tiger books are excellent. The one on
iPod & iTunes (not written by David) are closer to dummies guides
than useful manuals.
You might also look into the cheap e-books from tidbits:
web page
I found "upgrading to panther" invaluable when I made the
switch from 9 to X.

[MCJ]

You might want to try Mac OS X Tiger Unleashed, which is pretty authoritative.

I can't vouch for the Scott Knaster book but this may be what you are looking for if you want to customise OS X. And both books for $47 seems like a pretty sweet deal.

If you are really serious about changing OS X to look like OS 9 I'd recommend ShapeShifter from Unsanity. I know that there is at least one Classic theme for it.

[Naphtali]

Many thanks for the reference information.
I don't want OS X to resemble OS 9. My machine has extensive custom key commands, additional drop-down menus of my choosing, pop-up windows of my choosing (first done in Now Utilities 6.5, I believe, in my OS 7.5.3), extensive single-click or drop-on buttons arranged bottom and bottom-left of screen.
Result of this apparent mishmash is [my] ability to avoid my trackball for long periods, ability to quickly and transparently go directly to current work, plus ability to access archives of older work or archive versions of current work. All occurs without sacrificing screen space.

[MCJ]

Apologies for the misunderstanding.
Please let me know how you fare with OS X /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Dan Frakes]

Quote:

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While I'm not terribly interested in learning command-line interface nuances, I do want to know where OS X puts its bazillions of files and why. A good understanding of permissions and layers of administration is also wanted.

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For this particular info, check out this free chapter (PDF download) of a book I wrote a couple years ago; the book was written for Panther, but the vast majority of it is applicable to Tiger, as well.
(Three parts that are a bit out of date: (1) editing the NetInfo database; (2) repairing permissions [check out our reference instead]; and (3) changing the short username [use ChangeShortName instead].

[Naphtali]

Again, my thanks to all responders.
Mr. Frakes, I downloaded the Acrobat file. Now it's time to read it.