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From: james@netcom.COM (James L. Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Why aren't 7.0 aliases real?
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.013825.13118@netcom.COM>
Date: 8 Apr 91 01:38:25 GMT
References: <1991Apr7.221543.3719@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: Netcom
Lines: 48

In article <1991Apr7.221543.3719@athena.mit.edu> mlwiese@mit.edu writes:
>Note: Flame ahead
>
>I was disappointed to discover that aliases in 7.0 are only an illusion
>presented by the Finder and StdFile. This means that NO application is 7.0
>compatible without a rewrite to support aliases, IMO. Yeah, aliases are a new
>feature, but I expected them to work everywhere and so will a lot of other
>users.
>
>Will someone please tell me why the OS can't intercept a file system call
>dealing with an alias and automatically resolve the alias? Sure, some disk
>editing apps might break, but better a few of them than ALL apps.
>
>Mike

Could you clarify this a bit? I haven't had any problems with aliases. In
every case I have tried, an alias behaves just like the original file, similar
to a unix symlink.

Even over a network, accessing a published alias on another mac hasn't seemed
to be a problem. I have aliases of many applications in my Apple Menu Items
folder. There's no problem getting QuickKeys to use aliases, either. All my
applications seem to use aliases just fine, just as if they were working with
the original file.

The alias files created are not illusions, as far as I can tell. They are
real files about 2k in size, with the "alias bit" set, so that the system
knows that that alias is not the actual file, but a file reference.

I haven't run into any cases yet where something needs to be rewritten to
support aliases.

What doesn't work with aliases? In what way do you consider them to be an
illusion? You say that NO applications work with them... In what way do
applications fail to work with aliases? You say they do not work everywhere.
Where do you find them to fail?

I'm asking out of curiosity. My experience with aliases sounds different
from yours. I'm running 7.0FC1. I'd appreciate an example where the illusory
nature of aliases can be demostrated.


-- 
James L. Paul

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