[comp.sys.mac.misc] Wanted Finder-feature

ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) (12/11/90)

I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says
"Select Pattern."  You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern
somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that
had names matching the pattern.  So in one fell swoop, for instance, you
could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them
to the trash at once.

Some caveats:  I realize that this would probably be hellishly confusing
to novice users.  Hmm.  Could there be some way for power users to add
desired commands to the menus?  As long as I'm wishing, I'd like to be able
to add a "Rebuild Desktop" command to my Special menu.

Another caveat:  please do real (Unix-style) pattern-matching instead of
half-assed DOS pattern matching!

Another request to change an oddness in Finder behavior.  In a Finder that's
had "Title Click" enabled, try this:
Let A, B, and C be folders such that A contains B, which contains C, and
folders A and C are open, but not B.  C is the currently active window.

Option-double-click on the title bar of folder C.  It opens folder B, and
then closes the window showing folder A.

I think that this ought to close folder C instead, because usually, holding
down Option as you open a folder from within a given folder closes the
current folder for you.

In particular, this ought to be fixed before System 7 comes out with aliases.
What happens if you Option-Double-Click on an aliased folder, and it closes
some unexpected folder?

Ralph
--
Ralph Melton	The White Rabbit	ralphm@portia.stanford.edu

"When you hear of a storybook romance, you don't think of the storybook
as being _Alice in Wonderland_ . . ."

lsr@Apple.com (Larry Rosenstein) (12/12/90)

In article <1990Dec10.220619.13452@portia.Stanford.EDU>, ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) writes:
> 
> I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says
> "Select Pattern."  You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern
> somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that
> had names matching the pattern.  So in one fell swoop, for instance, you
> could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them
> to the trash at once.

You can do this in System 7, with the new Find command.  It doesn't
provide a full filename pattern facility, but it does handle the most 
common cases.  (You can even do this on an entire volume if you wish.)

> In particular, this ought to be fixed before System 7 comes out with aliases.
> What happens if you Option-Double-Click on an aliased folder, and it closes
> some unexpected folder?

Double click on the title bar is gone in System 7.  Instead if you hold 
down the command key and click, you get a popup menu of the entire path
to the folder.  Selecting any item from the menu opens/brings to the front
that window.

My impression from limited use is that the option modifier (close the current
window) is used in more cases in System 7 than before.  For example, holding
down the option key while double clicking an application also closes the
active window.