On Tuesday, April 23, 2002, at 02:56 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: >> You're still thinking in Bill's terms about what a "system" >> is. For MacOS < X the whole metaphor is different than Unix >> and M$. It's possible to have several System Folders on the >> same disk partition and "bless" one of them to be the active >> one on re-start. Consequently, paths are relative to the >> current system and not as you describe above: "C:\My >> Documents" and a (logically) single system registry.
> That changes nothing whatsoever. Please explain. I'm saying that in traditional MacOS, things are referenced by symbolic constants from the current system. You seem to be saying that M$ references them from a hard-wired path. Seems to me to be different. > In Windows, even Win95, there can be multiple settings for > system file locations other than the ones for the OS itself, > stored in user profiles. I don't think we're on the same page here. On Macintosh, there are individual user settings when the system is configured for multiple users. That's not what I've been trying to illustrate. >> This implies that whatever Control Panel one activates to >> change a certain system default setting doesn't change the >> settings of the system folder it currently "belongs" to. > I don't see how this changes anything whatsoever. That's what I mentioned previously about "thinking in Bill's terms". I guess one would actually have to work with a MacOS for a few years in order to perceive the difference. For this particular case, I should mention that Johannes has a Windows machine, and I have a Windows emulator whereas I don't think you have a Mac. So both J. and I can say by experience that these OSes are fundamentally different. (And probably both say that it's bloody difficult to explain such things in email.) > The location of applications and documents ought to be a > configurable choice. To *not* make it configurable is > authoritarian, and that's so antithetical to everything Apple > has ever professed to stand for that I can't believe that it > would be so. There are two main notions being discussed. The default installation location for software that does not offer the user a choice, and the names and places of where one keeps one's applications and documents. For the latter, it's any disk, any folder, any reasonable name. For the former, it's either a problem with the programmer not knowing how to script the installer, or a problem for which there is no practical solution other than to create missionary position Applications/Documents folders if they don't exist and then put some stuff in them. This *does* occur with some software--like Acrobat Reader from Adobe for instance. That's because it has to relate to the /current system/ in order to configure itself to be configurable for the /current user/. > That you can delete the folders and they reappear only when > application installers are hardwired to use them suggests to me > that, perhaps, these locations are just recommendations and are > not, in fact, controlled by any OS or user environment setting. To a certain extent, yes. On Macintosh, due to the power of aliases, it's possible to trick even the system software. A few years ago, a buddy of mine became suspicious that someone was accessing his disk through his internet server. This was way before firewalls. So he put locked aliases to critical portions of the system in place of the real software and logged in a usual. Within a few minutes the connection crashed. He subsequently found out the server went down for more than a week. Kind of paid them their just deserts (and prompted him to get a new server). > I suspect that things are different in OS X in terms of > configurability. I've only done a bit of customization on X. There is the blend of traditional MacOS and Unix that represents around 45-50 years or so of OS traditions and development. That's a lot to be aware of when considering the implications of moving this or that here or there. However there are methods to create symbolic links which will either augment or replace the individual users home folder and swap files as well as shared Applications, Libraries, Frameworks, etc. Philip Aker http://www.aker.ca _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
