Moving Applications around

M

mfessenden

Registered
Trying to organize my OSX HD the other day, I moved some folders around trying to put all my OSX downloads into some sort of order. I moved All the Apple apps into a folder and now 'Command-F' in the Finder gives me a"can't find Sherlock' message. I know that the Unix file system is different and that aliases wont work if the original is moved, but is there a Prefs files somewhere that I can edit to change my directory structure?

Mike
 
The fact that the sherlock location seems to be hard-coded into desktop.app does strike me as a bit of a bug... but then again, I think that the same problem appears in OS 9.

I looked through all the plist files, but none contain a path to sherlock, so I can't help there.
I do want to note that alias behavior is pretty much identical to before -- you can move the original all around just fine. (There are other kinds of links that you can make from the command line -- namely hard and soft links, that have different behaviors, and may be breakable, but I can't recall how they work off the top of my head.) Also it is interesting to note that moving originals of docked items does not cause problems -- when I moved sherlock, the dock wa still able to find it even though the finder wasn't. Curious.

Zach
 
Where would Apple have been using symlinks?

The dock uses some wierd plist mechanism that is neither link nor alias to keep track of its files.
The OS 9 finder has the same problem with misplacing sherlock (I did this intentionally so when I hit command-F the old (fast, commercial-free) find window comes up. And OS 9 sure doesn't have symlinks to get broken. My guess is that, like OS 9, Desktop.app is hard-coded to find sherlock in one place. If its not there, no dice. If there's a symlink to sherlock somewhere, it should be possible to fix this issue by remaking the link -- but I sure can't find one anywhere in the resources or a hint of one in a plist or anything.


Zach
 
Originally posted by zpincus
Where would Apple have been using symlinks?

The dock uses some wierd plist mechanism that is neither link nor alias to keep track of its files.
Click to expand...

System Preferences uses the same if I'm not wrong: if you choose an application to open at startup, it needs to be where it was. That's a strange behaviour. Of course, we don't fell like we can move things around like in a real Mac OS. That's really bad in a way.
 
There are a lot of funny things that happen when you do this. One of the things that I could see becoming a problem is that if you move Classic, trying to boot a Classic app will fail unless you have Classic already running; it just won't boot.

I can still open the terminal and type "open -a Classic" and it will open even if I am not in the directory that Classic is presently in. I would imagine that Apple has fixed this in the final, because that might throw a lot of users who are used to being able to organize things to their own tastes.

Michael
 
Of course, we don't fell like we can move things around like in a real Mac OS. That's really bad in a way.
Click to expand...
Bad,but to some degree necessary in a multiuser system -

"WTF is Photoshop?"
"Oh, I moved it into my home directory"

That's still no excuse for not using aliases though.
 
Originally posted by endian
Of course, we don't fell like we can move things around like in a real Mac OS. That's really bad in a way.
Click to expand...
Bad,but to some degree necessary in a multiuser system -

"WTF is Photoshop?"
"Oh, I moved it into my home directory"

That's still no excuse for not using aliases though.
Click to expand...

Yes, a really good argument. I never thought of that. May be one day I'll get used to a MODERN operating system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top