After much thought (years?) I've converted the mac carbon VM to unix  
path names by burning up a few sleepless nights, this assists in the  
pending MacIntel port
and can be done before that happens. Since this is my fourth attempt  
at working the multiple aliased file paths it was a chance to rewrite  
that entire piece of logic
into something much smaller and  nicer.

So I need a few beta testers to confirm this all works. Interested  
parties should email me and I'll send them a VM, also people willing  
to compile and cross-check the c code for
issues are welcome.  Although the task sounds simple, open an image,  
open a file, delete a file, navigate to a directory, create a  
directory, delete a directory it's actually more complex because of  
all the other things you can do:

At application startup

a) We load an image based on command line startup
b) We load an image based on XML specification
c) We load an image from the bundle resource folder, using XML  
specification for name if needbe
d) We load an image based on AppleEvent open application (the default  
from XML specification00
e) We load an image in another application based on the open document  
request to a running VM.
f)  We load an image based on doubling clicking an image with no VM  
running

This should work on a folder name with unicode characters (accented  
or Japanese), and with a
path with say three levels of alias indirection which normally  
defeats the casual implementation of alias resolving.
This of course is an interesting place because normalization of  
unicode must occur between mac roman and utf-8 and hfs+ volume needs,  
plus
we do multiple aliases resolutions.

Other things
Navigation in the file list to a folder/file in an interesting place  
with three levels of folder alias indirection plus unicode characters.
Operations like read/write on a file, or creating or deleting the  
file in interesting places.
Confirm file information for aliases files in navigation window is  
correct.
Operations like deleting or creating a folder  or an using/deleting  
an aliased folder.
{I'll note we need to resolve how deleting an aliased folder works,  
does that mean delete the target folder or just the alias?}

Drag and drop of files from interesting places. (indirection aliases)
Loading a plugin from  (vm directory, vm/plugins, vm bundle/resources  
folder)  and perhaps as an alias (not tested)
resolving the download folder via the internet config plugin (not  
tested)
resolving the secure and unsecure pathnames in the security plugin
setting and getting the finder creator and type codes for a file
Switching to UTF-8 verses mac roman for internal vmpath support  for  
all of above (not tested ).

As you can see there is a lot of work to cross check all these  
features work, and perhaps ones I've not thought of.

Pending is a rework of the mpeg plugin to use the VM file name  
translation api to make a proper file name for opening,
that also applies to some other special purpose plugins we have.



  --
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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