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From: jnelson@gauche.enet.dec.com (Jeff E. Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Alphabetic listing of icons?  Also, clean up without overlap.
Message-ID: <19130@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 18 Jan 91 01:02:30 GMT
References: <2317@shodha.enet.dec.com>
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Reply-To: jnelson@gauche.enet.dec.com (Jeff E. Nelson)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 48

|>In article <687@mephisto.edu>, ashwin@gatech.edu (Ashwin Ram) writes...
|>Is there any way to re-order the icons in a folder so that they appear
|>alphabetically?  I want to display the icons in the "Show by icon" or "Show
|>by small icon" format but I want them to be listed (and maintained)
|>alphabetically.

Absolutely, but it takes periodic maintenance on your part to see that
the icons stay in alphabetic order. Here's how it works:

1. Open the folder containing the icons. Call this folder "child" and
the window containing the icons the "child window". Call the window
which contains the child folder the "parent window." 

2. Move the child window so you can see the blackened child icon in the
parent window.

3. With the child window selected, choose "select all" from the edit menu.

4. Choose "show by name" from the view menu.

5. Drag the selected icons to the child icon in the parent window and
release the mouse. That is, you're picking up all the files in the
folder and copying them back to the same folder.

6. Choose "show by icon" or "show by small icon" in the view menu.

Your icons are now sorted alphabetically.

|>Also, is there a way to get "Clean up window" to move icons (or small icons)
|>into appropriate array positions such that they do not obscure or overlap one
|>another?  E.g., if an icon has a long name attached to it, the next array
|>position over to the right might be left empty (or whatever); otherwise it
|>would be the same arrangement as "Clean up window" normally creates.

Technically speaking, what you ask for is not possible: you can only
have one default icon arrangement active at once. However, if you know
how to use ResEdit, you can modify the LAYO resource in the Finder to
change the default icon arrangement to whatever you want. There are
applications which modify the layout which are easier to use, but I
don't have a directory handy to tell me what or where they are. I
suggest looking for something with "layout" in its name on
sumex-aim.stanford.edu.

 
-Jeff E. Nelson
-Digital Equipment Corporation
-Internet: jnelson@tle.enet.dec.com
-Affiliation given for identification purposes only