From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ken Mankoff Subject: Re: Fwd: Mac OS Alias file links Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 07:32:40 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87ioqcfepi.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:34929) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WZf88-0001lC-5j for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Apr 2014 07:33:01 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WZf7y-0004aS-Sm for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 14 Apr 2014 07:32:51 -0400 In-reply-to: <87ioqcfepi.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Bastien Cc: emacs-orgmode Hi Bastien, Thanks for letting me know it displays properly and email received. The URL works for me this morning too. On 2014-04-14 at 05:22, Bastien wrote: > Even for those who uses MacOSX, you should perhaps be more specific > on how Org-mode would store such links, then somebody might step up. Aliases are a type of links ("ln" on linux, "shortcut" on Windows "alias" on OS X (OS X of course also supports "ln")). The difference between an OS X alias and "ln" is that if the target is moved, the OS X alias still points to it, and double-clicking on an alias (or issuing the "open" command in a terminal) will open the target, wherever it is. I just checked in a VM and Windows Shortcuts also behave this way. Therefore, if in addition to "file:" there were an "alias:" option, Org could link to files that move. I think this is a powerful feature. I imagine "alias:" would be an option when I press C-cl, and a way to set it as the default when I press C-ucl. That is, links would be [[alias:foo][FileName]] where "foo" is a string version (hashed?) of the alias. In BibDesk, "foo" is ~1200 characters long, and according to the BibDesk documentation, that ~1200 characters is: > The Bdsk-File entries store Mac OS aliases, which contain a file ID > and absolute path. Bdsk-File entries also store a relative path, which > is used if the alias is broken. So it looks like an Alias can be hashed some way and stored as just a string. An example BibDesk entry in by BibTeX file looks like: @article{citekey, Author = {Someone}, Journal = {Nature}, Pages = {24--42}, Title = {{A Paper}}, Bdsk-File-1 = {YnBsa...etc for 1200 characters...}} Opening the file with C-o would involve un-hashing it, and then treating it the same way a "file:" is opened. I imagine Org would mostly store the links the same way it stores file links. The change would be that since the link is the alias (long ugly string), the description would be required, and perhaps default to /path/to/filename. Although since the whole point is that the /path/to/ can change, perhaps the default name would just be filename. -k.