From: Mark Fowler Date: 11:13 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions. Okay, this thing is driving me insane. I want to change my foo.html file to foo.tt2. I want to put some template code in it. Will the finder let me do this? Nope! I click and change it's extension and it just changes it. Keeps the nice HTML icon. Hey, nice I think. Everything runs, but ten minutes later my script can't find the file. Why? Because it's been renamed to foo.tt2.html. Argh! Apparently, if the extension isn't known to the OS then the policy is to just hide the actual extension and show the name that you've changed the file to. This is nice for Ma and Pop when they're using the computer, but I'M TRYING TO GET SOME WORK DONE, OKAY? I really need the file to be called what I renamed it to. So I try renaming the file foo.txt and sure enough it prompts me, saying 'Are you sure you want to change the extension...'. So I click 'use .txt' and the file is renamed to foo.txt (which I check in an xterm, and it really is called that) Then I change it from foo.txt to foo.tt2. And it gives me foo.tt2 in the finder, but the file is now foo.tt2.txt. No closer! So I give up on this. I use 'mv foo.tt2.txt foo.tt2'. Huzzah! The file is called what it needs to be called. Except now the finder displays it as 'foo'. No extension. What is going on? How do I get this thing to stop! Not even Windows Explorer is this braindead.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 11:36 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions. On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Mark Fowler wrote: > What is going on? How do I get this thing to stop! So I have been threatened with a slap from my friends for not finding this in Finder, preferences. Apparently the option I want is 'Always show file extensions', and it's in there. Of _course_ I should have looked for an option effecting the way files are viewed in the Preferences, rather than in the View Options dialog. Of course! Even though there's no other option for effecting how files are viewed in there. Even though all other options for that kind of thing are, well, in VIEW OPTIONS. Okay, I'm stupid, but apple aren't helping matters here. Mark.
From: Paul Mison Date: 11:39 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions On 02/09/2003 at 11:13 +0100, Mark Fowler wrote: >What is going on? How do I get this thing to stop! Not even Windows >Explorer is this braindead. Finder > Preferences > Always View File Extensions Of course, if Avie hadn't had his NeXTy way with things, the Mac might just use metadata that wasn't part of the file name for file typing, and something this braindead would never happen. Even then people would complain that everyone else uses file extensions so the Mac should too. Bah. Mark asked elsewhere whis isn't in View Options, and the justification appears to be that they're about setting per window options. Of course there's also a 'make this a default' button. That'd be nice if it worked. Every time I reboot - whether the Finder quits cleanly or not - I have to switch list view back to 'Don't use relative dates' and 'Do calculate folder sizes'. It fails to remember whether the toolbar (another NeXTish horror) is showing or not. I can't change the default list view alignment (because the size of the file name by default is far too huge for my liking). At least the icon view settings generally work. Bah.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 13:01 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 11:39:46AM +0100, Paul Mison wrote: > Of course, if Avie hadn't had his NeXTy way with things, the Mac > might just use metadata that wasn't part of the file name for file > typing, and something this braindead would never happen. Even then > people would complain that everyone else uses file extensions so the > Mac should too. Bah. IMHO this is one of OS X's Great Leaps Backward from MacOS Classic. :(
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:18 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions > Of course, if Avie hadn't had his NeXTy way with things, the Mac > might just use metadata that wasn't part of the file name for file > typing, and something this braindead would never happen. Even then > people would complain that everyone else uses file extensions so the > Mac should too. Bah. Doesn't it just use the extension if the metadata isn't there? Didn't OS 9 do that already? It sure seemed to. What's new is "hide the extension", and that seems to be a Windows stupidity. 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. [insert flame about rsyncx and how people who extend a protocol in incompatible ways should have the common decency to make it either fall back to a safe mode when dealing with the original implementation or fail, *NOT* transfer the same file three times for the three separate chunks of file data and therefore end up with *only* the resource fork at the destination *and* of course the match fails on the next sync so you go through the same chinese fire drill again] 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.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 15:31 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions 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.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:51 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions > To some degree, yes. But it worked quite a bit differently (for example, > it never tried to enforce extensions on a given file). That's the Taint of the Beast of Redmond. > 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. Hide Extension is one of those things I always turn off when I find it on. Along with things like "Automatically run helper application after downloading" and other wide open security holes. > >What *I* wish they'd do is make it easier to get to the metadata from the > >UNIX side. [...] > The Mac-Carbon distribution (port of the MacPerl Mac:: extensions) That's jumping from the frying pan into the blast furnace. My mind doesn't work the way Larry Wall's does, so Perl isn't a nifty toolkit for me, it's the Valley of the Shadow of Death. > And, of course, there are the included programs in the Developer Tools, > GetFileInfo and SetFile (which the p[sg]etfinfo programs are modeled after). Guess I'll grovel around in there, do they call anything GCC isn't capable of getting me into? > 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. Hopefully. I *like* the toolbar, I like having a common user interface feature like that in most programs (and I wish it was *all* programs). It looks like it's gone for good, alas. God I wish they'd fix iTunes and a couple of other programs to use the normal GUI, though, so I could theme the Metal out of them. And so iTunes would "jump up and down like a Jack Russel Terrier" instead of popping up Windows-style and stealing the focus from the app I was REALLY working on. METAL DELENDA EST.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 16:12 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions At 09:51 -0500 2003.09.02, Peter da Silva wrote: >> The Mac-Carbon distribution (port of the MacPerl Mac:: extensions) > >That's jumping from the frying pan into the blast furnace. My mind doesn't >work the way Larry Wall's does, so Perl isn't a nifty toolkit for me, it's >the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But it is used to create useful tools, like what I mentioned with MacOSX-File, for which you don't need to use perl directly. You just need to install a perl distribution (I feel a hates software rant coming on ;-). >> And, of course, there are the included programs in the Developer Tools, >> GetFileInfo and SetFile (which the p[sg]etfinfo programs are modeled after). > >Guess I'll grovel around in there, do they call anything GCC isn't capable >of getting me into? They just call the standard Mac API, which is available to gcc, if that's what you mean. The code in both MacOSX-File and Mac-Carbon uses the same or similar calls in their .xs files, if you want some C source (I am not sure if GetFileInfo and SetFile have their source available).
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:30 on 02 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Mac OS X Finder and changing extensions > But it is used to create useful tools, like what I mentioned with > MacOSX-File, for which you don't need to use perl directly. You just need > to install a perl distribution (I feel a hates software rant coming on ;-). I'm not going to get on yet another upgrade treadmill on all my boxes, which is what I'd need to do to switch from rsync to psync, just to run one application on one of them. [insert rant about dependencies -- that one's practically pro-forma by now]
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