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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!munnari!basser!johnz
From: johnz@basser.oz (John Zic)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Cleaning up cluttered DeskTops
Message-ID: <414@basser.oz>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 01:17:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: basser.414
Posted: Tue Aug 27 01:17:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 07:27:45 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Science, Univ. of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 30

I have uncovered a REALLY cute problem with Finder 4.1.

The problem is as follows:

    I have been using a disk for quite a while now as a temporary holding 
    area, moving files and applications to and from it (quite a lot).
    Just the other night, the disk refused to eject, with a dialog box
    telling me that "there is insufficent memory to eject this disk"..
    "Humm", I thought. "I wonder why this is so?" 
    (I have a Thin Mac, by the way)
    So I leapt in with ResEdit, and had a look at the DeskTop File.
    What a mess! Icons (in ICN#), and their associated BNDLs, cluttering 
    up the DeskTop. The IMPORTANT THING is that over 90% of the icons and bndls
    were NOT being used by any applications on that disk!!! These are the
    remains of files and applications LONG GONE... over 6 months,in fact!

And I thought that the mac would be clever-er than that!

Question:
    Is there any way of garbage-collecting these icons etc AUTOMATICALLY,
    as opposed to using BFI (brute force and ignorance) and the ResEdit
    to (periodically) delete unwanted things on the DeskTop??? 
    

Here's hoping  ) -: )

John Zic 
Basser Dept. of Computer Science
Sydney University
NSW 2006 Australia