Fetch Softworks

Aliases or Symlinks Aren't Recognized (4 posts)

• Started 20 years ago by gregarios
• Latest reply 20 years ago from gregarios

• gregarios Member

  There is another problem I've noticed with Fetch for OS X only. The Mac OS 9 version did a wonderful job of recognizing symlinks or aliases and listing them as italicized in the file list, enabling people to see what was a real file and what was just a pointer. In Mac OS X though, an alias or symlink is only recognized as such if it doesn't have a suffix listed in the "Suffix Mapping" database. I really wish it would recognize the difference and display it no matter what suffix it has. Can anything be done?

  Posted 20 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  My thought was that if a suffix is recognized the Kind field should show what kind of file the symbolic link points to. But I can see your point that it might be more useful to have it listed as "alias".

  As for putting the name in italics, my recollection is that the data browser control on OS X does not make that possible. I will take another look at the problem for the next release.

  Thanks for the feedback,

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 20 years ago #

• gregarios Member

  Having it listed as "Alias" would be much more helpful to me, or at least giving it a special icon or something. As it is now, you can't tell the difference between a symlink and the original item when in Fetch unless you "show file list" from the menu. I look forward to future releases.

  [This message has been edited by gregarios (edited 12-30-2002).]

  Posted 20 years ago #

• gregarios Member

  I've come up with a couple more ideas:

  1) Why not prepend "(Alias)" to the beginning of the description, or even append it to the end of the name, thereby keeping the same icon and allowing people to see the real description for the actual file as well? :-)

  2) Color the text names of the files with a lighter color if they are aliases? Or possibly give people the option of selecting a color to show text for folders/files/aliases/etc.

  Posted 20 years ago #