Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!news
From: t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: System 7 Aliases - only half there
Message-ID: <1991Mar14.203258.16538@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 91 20:32:58 GMT
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Center for Engineering Design
Lines: 37

First of all let me say that I LOVE ALIASES and they are going to make MacLife
a whole lot better. My following comments are only intended to encourage Apple
to make them work everywhere.

The first problem I ran into is that you can't create an Alias of a file on a
file server if the folder is read only. Easy solution: allow a shortcut to
making an Alias by option-shift-dragging the file to the destination to create
an alias at the destination. This makes is possible to make aliases of
read-only folder items. This also speeds up the process for regular aliases
too. 

Aliases don't work in many places. Many programs and utilities go looking for
stuff in the System folder. It appears that they look for the file by name and
upon finding it do a resource open which of course opens up the Alias file and
not the file it points to! It seems like the low level stuff ought to point any
kind of "OPEN" to an Alias file to the actual file. If an Alias file needs to
be opened then some kind of special open should be called.

Even the System itself doesn't do the right thing!!!!!! You can't have an Alias
of any of the special system folders (Apple Menu, Extensions, Controls,
Preferences, etc) replace the actual folder. Meaning the real folder is
somewhere else other that the System folder and the Alias is in the System
folder. I WANT THIS FEATURE!

I would like to make aliases of downloadable laser files and put them in the
Extensions folder so I don't have to keep the actual files around locally.
Meaning I want the aliases to point to real files on the file server. Printing
doesn't work this way (at least not in System 7b4).

FOR FUTURE CONSUMPTION: How about aliases to resources inside files! That could
allow applications to have shared code or other resources. Kind of a lower
level publish & suscribe of sorts!

Tony Jacobs
Center for Engineering Design
University of Utah
t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu