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Re: Out of Control Aliases?
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Re: Out of Control Aliases?


  • Subject: Re: Out of Control Aliases?
  • From: Ron Hunsinger <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:20:54 -0700

On Oct 3, 2012, at 4:30 PM, Christopher Stone <email@hidden> wrote:
> Since when has an alias file been 2.3 Megabytes????!!!!

Since icons got huge.

An alias file has always contained a copy of the icon of the file it pointed to. The document itself doesn't need the icon, since the application supplies an icon for all its documents. But the alias file wants to keep its own copy of the icon, for in case the alias is placed on a volume where the document and/or application can't be found.

When an icon was 32x32 pixels (and 8-bit pixels at that), nobody noticed, but an icon now is 2048x2048 32-bit pixels. Compressed, of course, but still a lot bigger than it used to be.

Make an alias of an alias, and it gets even bigger, because now the second alias' icon contains the curved-arrow curved arrow alias badge from the first alias' apparent icon. (The first alias gets badged implicitly by Finder, but the second alias stores the effective icon of the first, badge and all.)

Keep doing that (making cascading aliases), and the sizes start to decrease, because each time the alias gets blurred a little, and compresses better.

We explored this phenomenon on the FineTunedMac forum a couple of years ago: see http://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=10940

-Ron Hunsinger (aka Ganbustein)


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