On Aug 13, 2005, at 7:30 PM, Marta Edie wrote: > While we are on this subject. Now, if I do make a "duplicate" > rather than an "Alias", it would work as an original, would it not, > and I could put it on a different computer or hard drive. Yes? -- > And then I have a different question : When I copy something, > where is it kept until I finally paste it? On the clipboard?
Preface: the word "Item"=file, folder, hard disk, or portable storage device (in the text below) Well, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the pods in the basement contained clones of the people they were to replace, only they weren't actually the originals. In the computer world, a copy is a copy is a copy. A "Duplicate" is a copy is a duplicate is a copy is a duplicate. With an alias, you have one item and two ways to get that item open, double-click on the original item or double-click on the alias. Either way, you are changing only one item. A duplicate or copy now means you have more than one item that are exactly the same inside. Changing one will not change the other no matter how hard you try. Now comes the fun part: If you have an alias and you move the original to another folder, the alias will spookily follow, seemingly knowing where you are hiding the file. If you move the alias it will still know where the original is located. This is because the alias is pointing to a physical location on the platters that make up your hard disk, so when you move it from folder to folder to folder, it never really moves from its physical location on the disk. (this is a very simplistic explanation) Even MORE fun: If you make an alias and trash the original, it's now called an orphaned alias, because it points to nothing. When you double-click on it, up pops a dialog asking for you to delete the alias OR....to pick another item for it to point to (Fix Alias) or click OK and do nothing. If you click OK you can put another item with the same name where the original existed and the orphaned alias (if not assigned a new original) will happily oblige and open the new item that has the same name is the older original. You could end up with an alias icon of one application opening a file of another application, something I do all the time in presos to showcase this behavior. Still EVEN MORE FUN: If you have an alias pointing to an item and you move the original and put a new item with the same name in the place where the original first existed, the alias will point to the original where you moved it, regardless of where it is. It will ignore the new item with the same name. Yet STILL EVEN MORE FUN IF THAT'S POSSIBLE: You can make aliases of aliases. Try creating an alias of an item. Then create an alias of that alias. Then rinse and repeat. See how many aliases you can create to point to one item then remove some of the aliases in the middle and see if it still works. To your final question about makin' copies, When you highlight something and click command-c or Edit>Copy, the highlighted item goes to your Mac's internal clipboard. You can see the contents of the clipboard by choosing Edit>Show Clipboard from the Finder menu. There are a few programs that give you multiple clipboards, such as Clipboard Manager, ClipBlock, CopyPaste, iClip, and others (my favorite being ClipBlock). You can now have several clipboards hold many different items. So you see, there's fun to be had by all with aliases and clipboards, just check your basement once in a while for pods. Schoun | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be August 25. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
