Re: OS X File system Layout (was Re: AppleScript & HTML Again...)
Re: OS X File system Layout (was Re: AppleScript & HTML Again...)
- Subject: Re: OS X File system Layout (was Re: AppleScript & HTML Again...)
- From: "Dennis W. Manasco" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 04:39:52 -0600
At 3:37 am -0800 3/29/04, Walter Ian Kaye wrote:
If a stupid-ass Apple update puts an update in /Applications, I move
it to the desired category.
Aside the "You don't have that so I can't update it" dialogs, recent
MacFixIt reports seem to indicate that sometimes an updater will
stick a partial (changes only?) application where it thinks the whole
application should be. (Sorry, I can't seem to find a representative
URL to pull up, but I know I've seen at least one.)
I've been wanting to create a hierarchy similar to what you've shown,
but without the /Applications container (and across several disks),
since I moved to OS X. I tried a bit of it, but got put off by the
refusal dialogs and multiple applications. I haven't had the stomach
to try lately because of the horror and hassle stories I've read.
I have always done this, and I will always do this. I have never had
a problem (aside from getting pissed at Apple for their stupidity)
I'm glad it's worked for you. I've just been getting madder and
madder about the stupidity.
IMHO Apple's apparent insistence on requiring Apple-supplied
applications to be in unvarying locations is a major security
breach waiting to happen.
In addition to just being stupid. :)
That was implied, but thank you for explicitly stating it. :) It's a
point that should be made as often as possible when discussing
Apple's complete idiocy in hard-wiring application locations (an
idiocy virus that seems to be spreading: viz. Adobe CS apps).
Can we complain about the Preferences folder, too? It's in dire need
of categorization.
It's in dire need of a major enema, and has been since before System 7.
Can we complain about the imbeciles who let their programs require
something of _importance_ in the Preferences folder?
Given the historically verifiable multitude of problems that apps can
have when reading prefs (Doesn't anyone bullet-proof their
pref-reading code?), the user should be able to trash the whole
Preferences folder and only need to recreate their personal
variations on default program and system behavior.
(And maybe their registration codes. But don't those really belong in
a Registrations folder? -- It's not as if users are too stupid to
look in the prefs folder to find and copy their registrations....)
However, you can find applications written as far back as System 6
(and before) that apparently can't figure out a place to drop their
templates, examples, menu-selectable starting-point-required files,
help files, documentation, whatever. So they just poop them down in
the Preferences folder (or, worse yet, the Extensions folder), like a
cat who can't find his litter box.
This is criminally execrable behavior on a rudeness level comparable
to that of the worst Windows games I've ever installed, but I've
never seen a program lose two stars in a review for doing it. I've
also never seen Apple release a tech note that decries such an
obviously foolish approach to application file organization.
Stupidity in the organization, demarcation, and maintenance of
Apple's default file hierarchies goes back a long way.
Still, as John said, "that's a rant for a different night."
Let's just hope that the night is not put off indefinitely: The time
is long overdue for someone to whack the heads of some
middle-management system-structure-overview droids with a
smart-stick. The trench coders should be able to fix most of the
problems with dispatch if they are just given a prod in the right
direction.
(This is all sliding off-topic of the discussion about Missing Link,
which looks like it could be a very useful piece of kit if it had
it's default security nailed down quite a bit better -- and a rather
dangerous thing to install in its present form, even, or perhaps
especially, for non-paranoid users.)
-=-Dennis
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