On 10/2/05 3:12 AM, Mike Kluev didst favor us with:
> On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 17:00:05, Laurence Harris <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On 10/1/05 1:25 AM, Patrick McClaughry didst favor us with:
>>
>>> To tell the truth I do not know, but I'll try to find out and post
>>> what I find.
>>
>> That would be great. Thanks. BTW, that was supposed to say "My application
>> lets people *set* the name-locked bit." There isn't any point in letting
>> them set an obsolete bit, hence my question.
>
> I'd allow people to set/inspect *all* bits (and everything else
> in FInfo/FXInfo), even if it doesn't make sense now.
That's fine. You go right ahead.
> Provide nice UI for those bits/fields that makes sense now, but also provide
> some UI to set/inspect other fields (hex-view, or something fancier like
> "fdFlags bit 5", "fdIconID", etc).
Oh gag. No way. This is not a tool for ultra-geeks. If you want to write
something like that, you go right ahead. Furthermore, you're not considering
the fact that if you support setting something like a "name locked" bit and
setting it doesn't stop people from editing names, you stand a chance of
people sending you "bug reports" about your feature not working. I've
already seen this with the invisible bit because the Finder refuses to see a
change in the invisible bit until the Finder is restarted. The scenario goes
like this:
1. Users sets invisible bit.
2. File is still visible.
3. We get an e-mail telling us that setting the invisible bit doesn't work.
4. We waste time responding to explain that this is a bug that's been in the
Finder five years.
I think the only reason we don't get this a lot is that we've documented
that the Finder is oblivious to this change until you restart it, but we
still get one from time to time.
Every additional feature in your application, indeed, every additional line
of code in your application is an opportunity for bugs and support issues.
That's fine for features which are actually useful, but not, IMO, for
something that has absolutely no use at all.
> I hate it when
> ResEdit prohibits me setting "bundle" bit on folders, presumably
> because it didn't make sense back in time when ResEdit was designed.
> [It doesn't allow me to set dates on folders which made perfect
> sense even at the time.]
ResEdit is not a relevant example. I'm not designing an application with an
eye toward ensuring it's still useful 10-15 years after I stop developing
it. If they've officially deprecated the name lock bit, I'll take out the
option to read and set it. If they change their minds later I'll put that
stuff back. Then I can list it as a new feature in the next release. ;-)
Larry
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