Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions

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From: Chris Nandor
Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions
Date: 15:31 on 02 Sep 2003
At 09:18 -0500 2003.09.02, Peter da Silva wrote:
>Doesn't it just use the extension if the metadata isn't there? Didn't
>OS 9 do that already? It sure seemed to.

To some degree, yes.  But it worked quite a bit differently (for example,
it never tried to enforce extensions on a given file).

Also, another way you can change the extension with Hide Extension on is in
the Get Info window of a file.  It's buggy and sometimes doesn't work
right, though.


>What *I* wish they'd do is make it easier to get to the metadata from the
>UNIX side. I can grab the resource fork by opening ".../rsrc", but there
>doesn't seem to be an equivalent mechanism to get to the metadata. Right
>now I'm working on getting rsync to work properly on Mac OS. AUGH.

The Mac-Carbon distribution (port of the MacPerl Mac:: extensions) and the
similar MacOSX-Files distribution provide access to most (all?) of the
metadata you seek.  I never use MacOSX-Files directly, but I do use the
nice psetfinfo and pgetfinfo that come with it.  It also comes with psync,
a sort of metadata-respecting rsync.

And, of course, there are the included programs in the Developer Tools,
GetFileInfo and SetFile (which the p[sg]etfinfo programs are modeled after).


>The Jaguar Finder is obviously a work in progress. Unfortunately the Panther
>Finder looks to be a work in regress. Holy Mother of Xerox, that thing's an
>obvious dropping from the "I'm going to make your life suck" fairy.

It seems like it at first glance, but it also seems like you can disable
most of the crap, like the sidebar, to make it function pretty much like
how you might want it.  Also, the standard open/save file dialogs can
FINALLY use list mode instead of the damned column mode.

-- 
Chris Nandor                      pudge@xxxxx.xxx    http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network    pudge@xxxx.xxx     http://osdn.com/
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