Re: Tracking files the right way
Re: Tracking files the right way
- Subject: Re: Tracking files the right way
- From: Rosyna <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:20:51 -0700
Ack, at 8/29/02, Bill Bumgarner said:
I haven't looked deeply at the APIs to see what can be done
automatically, but I have noticed a couple of critical mistakes in
some apps.
Namely, iTunes completely hoses the references to music stored on
mounted filesystems. It ends up with a path that refers to the
music through /private/automount -- a path that really should be
hidden from the user (use /Volumes/* instead -- in either case,
you'll have to watch out for changing volume names!)
Also -- make sure you don't expand symlinks and the like in the path
(which can happen "automatically" when a path is manipulate via
certain APIs). Example: an OpenPanel will return
/some/path/to/a/file where the 'to' element is actually a symlink
off to
/some/nasty/path/the/user/should/never/see/that/leads/to/a/file.
Some apps have a habit of ending up with the second path, thus
confusing the user and often screwing up the reference in that
symlinks are often used to normalize the view of a filesystem
between two machines (typically, between a server and a client or
between two clients who have slightly different configurations -- OS
X Server uses symlinks to simulate a mount such that a user with an
AFP mounted home directory can still use the server without
requiring a self referencing mount).
Why do this at all? I strongly advocate people showing the HFS path,
as it's the one most recognizable to users from the desktop. Unless
they are using UFS, users don't see a / on their desktop, and even
then, they don't see the Volumes directory. However, if the path is
copied, it should copy the POSIX path. (heck, or just show both)
And although FSRefs use the same sorta "Technology" as aliases, they
are not the same. On UFS, FSRefs are not valid between processes
whereas aliases are. Even with HFS+, FSRefs might not be valid
between restarts.
--
Sincerely,
Rosyna Keller
Technical Support/Holy Knight/Always needs a hug
Unsanity: Unsane Tools for Insanely Great People
---
Please include any previous correspondence in replies, it helps me
remember what we were talking about. Thanks.
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