Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!husc6!sunfs3!kent
From: kent@sunfs3.camex.uucp (Kent Borg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: System 7.0
Message-ID: <490@sunfs3.camex.uucp>
Date: 21 Aug 89 16:09:56 GMT
References: <227700026@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <483@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <9173@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <13784@shamash.cdc.com>
Reply-To: kent@sunfs3.UUCP (Kent Borg)
Organization: Camex, Inc., Boston, Mass USA
Lines: 40

In article <13784@shamash.cdc.com> pwp@shamash.UUCP (Pete Poorman) writes:
>In article <9173@thorin.cs.unc.edu> markham@phi.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Markham) writes:
>>	New Finder(symbolic lincs, modifiable Views, a more intuitive "Find
>>		File" located as a menu option (I believe), configurable
>>		apple menu,etc)
>
>Surely Symbolic Links are a feature of the file system, not the finder!
>
>I've seen several attempts for a user interface to maintain an image of
>the file system that doesn't match the underlying structure.  It never works
>very well.  (One example, the Finder before HFS.)
>
>--Pete Poorman
>  Control Data Corporation
>  pwp@shamash.cdc.com


Nope.  `Aliases', as they are calling them, are implemented as a
little file which has the volume name and file id (itself a new 7.0
feature) of the actual file.

It is the Finder (which will always be there starting with 7.0) and
the standard file dialogs which implement the symbolic link.  This
means that programs which don't use the standard file dialogs will not
know about the aliases.  (MPW is the program programmers think of
first.)

With MFS folders the problems were not that the file system didn't
know about them, the problem was that no one knew about them except
the Finder, and the lack of real folders made the file system slow.
Aliases shouldn't have these problems.  They will probably have their
own set.

Related note: Apple said at the devl. conf. that standard file dialogs
will eventually go away.  Not with 7.0, but some point later.

Kent Borg
kent@lloyd.uucp
or
...!husc6!lloyd!kent