Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: System 7.0
Message-ID: <8368@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 23 Aug 89 01:33:18 GMT
References: <227700026@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <483@sunfs3.camex.uucp> <9173@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <13784@shamash.cdc.com> <490@sunfs3.camex.uucp>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 48

In article <490@sunfs3.camex.uucp> kent@sunfs3.UUCP (Kent Borg) writes:
>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.)

Actually, any program ought to be able to use them if it wants.  But I
wonder why the trivial changes to the file system weren't done that
would allow transparent access to symbolic links.  None of the disk
data structures have to change; the PBOpen, PBOpenRF, PBHOpen, and
PBHOpenRF routines (not to mention PBHGetFInfo etc.) just need to be
patched to recognize links.  If a third part could do it with an INIT,
I wonder why Apple didn't.

Of course, features haven't been frozen yet, so all claims about how
links will work in the released version should be taken with a grain of
salt.

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

This is the first I've heard of it, though I'll grant you I didn't
shell out the bucks for the conference.  That would be a pretty major
incompatibility, but it does make sense.  Right now, there are two
views of the file system, a modal name-list view (standard file) and a
modeless variable view (Finder).  No doubt Apple decided it would be
best to unify these.  But it's going to break practically every serious
program that's been released.  You *have* to hack standard file to some
extent for a distribution program.

On a semi-related note, what is this file id crap?  How are network
file system implementors supposed to implement yet another
Mac-file-system-only feature on servers on other operating systems?
Is Apple expecting all the other operating systems to just give up
eventually and implement Mac file systems, throwing away their own?
This seems like a bloody stupid decision and a feature of very limited
utility.  We've all had enough problems with directory ids, now this.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"The above opinions and suggestions have absolutely nothing to do with
 the little, fat man putting crisp, $100 bills in my pocket."
    -- Alan Vymetalik