Add Shortcut file type, simplify shortcuts generally #751
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inexorabletash
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Apr 13, 2023
This defines a new ProDOS file type - LNK ($E1/$0001) that acts as a link (a.k.a. shortcut, a.k.a. alias) for another file path. It's really quite minimal - just some header bytes and a ProDOS path. The basic usage is... create a link, and you can open it / double-click it as a shortcut to opening the original. Maybe you put links to games in a directory. Or links to specific programs in the Apple menu. Long term this might replace the current Shortcuts/Selector mechanism. See #751 for thoughts there. This commit has two parts: * DeskTop get support for LNK files. An icon, type, and you can double click on them. * A "Make Link" desk accessory that will create a link file for the selected icon (file or folder or volume). The links are created in a LINKS/ directory under the DeskTop folder, because they need to go somewhere. The "Make Link" DA should be considered a temporary hack until I figure out exactly what I want to do with Shortcuts/Selector.
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Oh, another big downside is controlling "copy to RAMCard" on startup/run. Gotta figure that out too. |
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Yes, this feels to me more elegant than what the MouseDesk developers crafted. Maybe the "copy to RAMcard" functionality could just be a separate sub-folder inside SHORTCUTS, like SHORTCUTS/PRELOAD ? Or if that's too wonky, maybe changing the Auxtype of the shortcut file? |
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It looks like the Make Alias feature is accomplishing this. I like the LNK files. |
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I was watching a video about the Lisa and it put me in the mood to think about how the Macintosh was forced by limited time and lack of memory/ROM/disk resources to be extremely minimal. No bells and whistles. And like much great art, editing down often makes things better. Lots of the improvements to A2D have been by removing things to simplify the experience.
One thing that really stands out in A2D as surprising complexity are the Shortcuts, called Selector items, in the original MouseDesk/A2D 1.1. From the perspective of "how can we make a simplified launcher, and turn desktop into an editor for the entries?" it makes sense. But it's a lot of added complexity. What's a simpler, more general approach? What would the Macintosh team in 1984 have done?
Well, we don't know, but thanks to time travel we can look ahead into the future of 1991, where System 7 introduced three things: (1) the Apple Menu and (2) a Launcher that were both populated by (3) Aliases. Instead of a dedicated editor for menu entries (e.g. Font/DA Mover), you just combine the primitives - file selection, alias creation, and file drag/drop. DeskTop already did this for the DESK.ACC folder (now called APPLE.MENU). What's missing are Aliases.
So... I'm thinking of introducing a Shortcut file type. (It took ~15 minutes to code up support, but I'm not sure I'll incorporate it any time soon.)
The idea is to replace the entire Shortcuts-as-a-special-file-and-dedicated-editor with a menu populated from a folder (maybe SHORTCUTS/), and a "Make Shortcut" command that makes a shortcut to the selected icon, and drops it in that folder. No more need for Edit/Delete/Run a Shortcut commands - they're just files in a folder. The optional Selector module just enumerates the directory, shows the first 24 items. Easy peasy!
The down sides include:
This also lets us extend the number of items in the Shortcuts menu (#299) to 11 (14 total items minus "Make Shortcut", "Show Shortcuts", and a separator)
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