Mac Menu Help

> This is a help file for the Mac Menu in Alpha. This file should be located in the Help subfolder of Alpha's folder to show up automatically in the Help menu when Alpha is loaded. It documents version 2.3 of the package.

- Introduction
- Installation
  - Automatic installation
  - Manual installation
  - After installing
- Quick start
- Dialogs description
  - Main selection dialogs
  - Renaming dialog
  - Particular dialogs
  - Information dialog windows
- Menu Items Description
  - Main menu
  - Get Info submenu
- Mac Shell Syntax
  - Shell prompt
  - 'help' command
  - 'files' command
  - Options for the files command
  - Subcommands of the 'files' command
  - 'infos' command
  - Commands for browsing
  - Other commands
  - Unix commands
  - Commands history
  - Extending Mac Shell
- MacMenu programming interface
- Completion mechanism
- Getting info
- Key Bindings
- Preferences
- Version History
- Known problems
- License and Disclaimer

## Introduction

Mac Menu for Alpha allows you to achieve all kinds of files manipulations from Alpha and to interact with the MacOS file system with maximum flexibility.

You can act upon selections of files taken out of a folder or a hierarchy of folders and subfolders: the selection is made using a regular expression (regexp) and setting various additional conditions. You have thus full and extended control on which files you want to manipulate.

Actions executed on the selected files are: copying, moving, renaming, duplicating, trashing/untrashing, locking or unlocking, making aliases, selecting or unselecting, listing, changing creator type.

You can also get complete system information about all kinds of elements such as files, folders, disks, processes etc. and set new values for certain properties (change a type, a creator, a modification date, sharing status etc.). Commands are also provided for basic Finder's tasks: emptying the trash, restarting the computer etc.

All the commands are available from a menu called Mac Menu but the package also implements a 'shell' to execute all these functions from a command line. For instance, just type 'empty' at the prompt of Mac Shell to empty the trash. A very simple syntax is provided to write commands and to navigate in the MacOS files system.

All these actions are executed without leaving the Alpha editor. The package is almost exclusively based on Apple Events sent to the system.

See the tutorial file and read more information below for a complete description of all the items available in Mac Menu.

Starting from version 2.3, Mac Menu runs only with AlphaX on OSX. To run it under OS8 or OS9 you must get an older version of the package.

## Installation

### Automatic installation

If you received Mac Menu with a regular distribution of Alpha, there's nothing particular to do: it is already installed and you just have to turn it on (see After installing below). Otherwise, the simplest way of installing the package is to use the automatic installation facility. Just double-click on the OPEN TO INSTALL file. Opening this file tells Alpha that a new package has to be installed: the procedure is automatic. Alpha knows where to store the different elements of your 'Mac Menu' package.

### Manual installation

If you prefer a manual installation, take the following steps:

1. put the macMenu folder in the Menus subfolder of the Tcl folder which is located at the same level as your Alpha application

2. put the Mac Menu Help files in the Help folder located at the same level as your Alpha application. Next time you launch Alpha, you will see a Mac Menu Help item in the Help menu.

3. put the MacMenu-Example and MacMenu-Example.tcl files in thefolder called Mode Examples and located at the same level as the Alpha application.

4. launch Alpha. You have to rebuild the package indices and the Tcl indices. Rebuild Package Indices is in the Config / Packages menu, and Rebuild Tcl Indices is in the Tcl menu.

5. quit Alpha and relaunch it: that's all there is to it.

### After installing

Have a look at the Mac Menu preferences in the Packages submenu of the Config menu. You can set various flags there. More explanations below.

## Quick start

Suppose you have a folder containing all the pages of a Web site and you want a list of the image files having extension gif or jpeg. In the List Files dialog window, specify the folder and click on the Extensions button. In the new window check gif and jpeg and press OK. This brings back to the previous window in which the Files Filter is now set like this:

        .*\.(jpeg|gif)

Click OK and you get the list you wanted. You could have specified In all Subfolders in the Process popup menu to get a list including files in the nested subfolders.

Suppose now you want to send to another folder a copy of the files taken out of this structure whose names meet the following requirements:

- first letter is A or P
- the extension is htm or html
- the name contains a suffix _XY
- the files were modified after Dec 25, 2000
- their size is less than 128k (to exclude big images for instance)

You have to build a regular expression representing the first three conditions. In the Copy Files dialog window, the Files Filter should be:

        [AP].*_XY\.html?

Then click on the Add conditions button and in the new window, set the last two contitions like so:

        Modification date after 2000-12-25
        Size greater than 128k

leaving the other fields blank. Clicking on Apply brings back to the previous dialog in which you set the paths of the source and the target folders. In the Process popup menu, choose in all Subfolders. Now click on Copy and there you go. The copy sent to the target folder will reproduce exactly the same hierarchy of folders and subfolders but will contain only the files corresponding to the required scheme.

Now suppose you want to rename the selected files. You want the new name to be like this:

- first letter Q instead of A or P
- following letters unchanged
- no _XY suffix
- extension old
- all file names in uppercase letters

Unless you cancelled in the Copy Files dialog window, all your settings will have been preserved when you open the Rename Files window. You have just one modification to do in the Files Filter regular expression: add a pair of parentheses to capture the .* part which will be refered to as \1 in the substitution expression:

        [AP](.*)_XY\.html?

The replacement string will then be:

        Q\1\.old

To have uppercase letters, click on the Add options button. In the new window, click on the Casing checkbox and choose UPPERCASE in the popup menu. Click Apply then click Rename. That's all there is to it.

## Dialogs description

Almost all the dialog windows in which you specify the options and conditions related to some kind of file manipulation share common elements.

### Main selection dialogs

The top part of the dialog is an edit field in which you write a regular expression describing the naming scheme of the files you want to act upon. It is very important to note that it obeys the regular expressions syntax and not the so-called 'globbing syntax' used in some Tcl commands. For more info about the regular expressions, read the Regular Expressions file in the Help Menu. Regular expressions are a very powerful syntax designed to describe abstractly almost any kind of strings.

The top part of the dialog windows also contains two check boxes called case sensitive and negate filter: check or uncheck them as you want. If the negate filter checkbox is checked, Mac Menu will search for files which do NOT correspond to the files filter regular expression. If the case sensitive checkbox is unchecked, Mac Menu will not take casing into account: uppercase and lowercase letters will be considered equivalent. The Add Conditions button calls a new dialog window in which you can specify additional options concerning the MacOS type or creator of the files, the date of creation or modification and the size (in kbytes). Dates are indicated in the ISO format (yyyy-mm-dd).

NB: the negate filter flag, if set, negates the filtering regular expression but NOT the additional conditions. They are... additional.

A pop-up menu lets you specifiy whether an action should be taken on all the files corresponding to the filter in the current directory, or should be extended to the subfolders down to a specified level as well or even to all subfolders, subsubfolders etc.

Almost all the dialog windows contain an edit field to specify the source folder: the folder in which to look for files or the folder at the top of the hierarchy if subfolders are concerned too. You can write the complete path of the source folder in the edit field or use the Set button to browse through the file system with a standard dialog.

When relevant (to copy or move files), an additional edit field lets you choose a target folder. If files are taken out of a hierarchy, the hierarchy will be transported to the target folder: if corresponding subfolders do not exist in the target folder, they will be created automatically. If the target folder itself does not exist, it is created too so you can specify the name of a non existing folder in the edit field. Use the Set button to choose an existing folder.

All the dialog windows have at least two buttons at the bottom: one to execute the desired action, one to cancel.

### Renaming dialog

The Rename Files dialog window contains a specific field to set the renaming scheme: it uses the substitution syntax of regular expressions. So you can use the special substitution symbols: & to designate the entire match, \1, \2 etc. to designate sub-expressions corresponding to pairs of parentheses in the files filtering regular expression. A button called Add Options brings up a new dialog window in which you can choose more options. They concern casing, incremental numbering and truncating. Tey have the following meaning:

- the casing option is self explanatory: change to UPPERCASE or lowercase, Capitalize Words or Capitalize first letter only.

- the numbering facility has various settings: numbering from zero or from one, appending the number at the beginning or at the end of the new file name, number in increasing or decreasing order. The padd with zeros option corresponds to the insertion of zeros at the left of the number when necessary: such as in 01, 02 etc. or 001, 002 etc.

- the truncating facility lets you specify a format for the new file names. The default value is 8.3 which corresponds to the MS-DOS limitation concerning file names: eight letters at most, a dot, three letters at most after the dot. The general syntax is m[.n] which means a single integer or two integers separated by a dot as in the 8.3 example. In the first case all file names will be truncated to a maximum of m characters whereas in the second case, if a file name has an extension, the part before the dot will be truncated to a maximum of m characters and the part after the dot to a maximum of n characters.

### Particular dialogs

The Trash Files dialog has no target folder field: the target is the trash. The Untrash Files dialog is different from the others and proposes two options: last trashed or all. In the first case, will be untrashed (i-e sent back to their original position in the files system) only the files most recently trashed from the Trash Files item in the Mac Menu. This is a sort of 'undo' facility if you have accidentally trashed files or have a remorse. With the all option, all the files currently in the trash will be untrashed.

The Change Creator dialog has an additional button called Other: if a creator type is not in the popup menu, you can specify another one. This button brings up a new dialog with an edit field to enter the new creator type (four chars maximum). If you do not know the creator type corresponding to an application, use the Same as button and indicate the application or any document created with this application. The Apply button selects the new type and brings back the Change Creator dialog ; the Add&Apply button has the same effect but additionally records the new type in the popup menu to make it available for future use (the list is reset though each time Alpha is relaunched: to make an addition permanent use the Mac Menu Preferences. See section below about preferences).

The Extensions button is a facility to specify files with particular extensions. It brings up a new dialog with several checkboxes: select the extensions you're interested in by checking the corresponding checkbox. The corresponding files filter regular expression will be built automatically in the main dialog window. If an extension is not mentioned in the Predefined Extensions dialog window, you have two possibilities:

- for a temporary usage, enter it in the Other extensions edit field. A list of space-separated extensions can be entered there. You can enter the extensions with or without the dot, this makes no difference.

- for a permanent usage, you might want to add your favorite file extensions to the Mac Menu Preferences (see the section about preferences below). In this case, the new extensions will have a checkbox of their own.

### Information dialog windows

The information windows display information about all kinds of items: files, folders, volumes, applications, processes or basic hardware. They almost all have a Dismiss, a Get Text. The File Infos dialog also has a Set button. With the Dismiss button, you simply quit the dialog. The Get Text button sends the collected information to a separate text window. The Set button allows you to set some properties: the corresponding fields are editable (an edit field for a variable or a checkbox for a flag). You validate your modifications with the Set button. Note that if your file is locked the modifications are not appliable: you must first unlock it. Be aware of what you are doing: changing low level properties is potentially dangerous. Don't play with the system files. In the case of a shared volume or folder, and if file sharing is on on the system, there is an additional Sharing button which gets and displays the complete sharing information about the item.

## Menu Items Description

Here is the list of all the menu items of the Mac Menu with explanations. Certain items are obtained if you hold the Option Key down while opening the menu.

### Main menu

Copy Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source and target folders and various options. Copy the selected files to the target creating the same hierarchy in the destination folder. The original files remain in the source folder.

Move Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source and target folders and various options. Move the selected files to the target creating the same hierarchy in the destination folder. The original files are removed from the source folder. Note that, as is the rule with MacOS, moving a file to another volume means in fact copying.

Rename Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the replacement expression, the source folder and various renaming options: the Add Options button brings a new dialog to set casing, numbering and truncating options. Rename the selected files according to the new scheme.

Duplicate Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. Duplicate the selected files in their original folder.

Trash Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. Sends the selected files to the trash: the files are not deleted until you empty the trash.

Alias Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. You can also optionnally specify a target folder. There are two possibilities:

- if no target folder is specified (empty field) or if it is the same as the source folder, then the aliases are made in the same folders (and subfolders if they are in a hierarchy) as the original files
- if a target folder is specified then all the aliases are sent to this folder no matter where the original files are located in the source folder, i-e even if the 'In hierarchy' flag is used. If this target folder does not exist, it is created.

When holding the option key down:

Remove Alias Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the source folder and the subfolders level. Remove all aliases found in these folders.

Lock Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. Lock the selected files in their original folder.

When holding the option key down:

Unlock Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. Unlock the selected files if they are locked.

List Files

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. Simply makes a list of the files selected according to the files filter and the various options and display it in a separate window. The Sort by pop-up menu allows you to choose one of five options (or no option) so that the list returned is sorted according to the selected criterion. You can sort by: Modification date, Creation date, Size, Kind, Labels. Check the Include Criterion checkbox to include the value of the criterion for each item in the result.

Change Encoding

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder, the current encoding of the files, and a target encoding in order to convert them to this encoding.

Change Eols

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and the environment the files belong to in order to convert the line endings between the various plateform specific types (mac, unix and win). For instance if you choose to convert eols (end of lines) from unix to mac, only Unix type files will be converted to the Mac type. If you choose all, conversion applies to all three kinds of files.

Change Creator

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options: a popup list lets you choose the new creator you want to assign to the selected files. Use the Other button to find another creator.

Change Type

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options: a popup list lets you choose the new type you want to assign to the selected files. Use the Other button to find another type.

Delete Rez Forks

Brings up a dialog in which you specify the files filter, the source folder and various options. This will delete the resource fork of the files. You will use this typically if you want to transmit some files to another environment (Unix, Windows) in which there is no notion of a resource fork.

Mac Shell

Opens a shell in which all the Mac Menu functions can be executed from a command line. See below the Mac Shell section for details on the syntax of this command line.

Empty Trash

Empty the trash.

Eject

Eject a removable volume (floppy, Zip, CD-ROM etc.). If there are several ejectable volumes, a list shows up from which you select the one you want to eject from its drive ; if there is only one ejectable volume, it is automatically ejected.

Sleep

Puts the computer to sleep.

Restart

Launches the process of restarting the computer.

Shut Down

Launches the process of shuting down the computer.

### Get Info submenu

File / Folder / Application

With these three items, a standard system window lets you designate the file, folder or application about which you want to get system information.

Volume / Process

With these two items, a list of all mounted volumes (and shared disks on remote computers) or a list of currently running processes lets you choose the one you want information about.

Hardware

(not available on OSX) Provides general hardware information about your computer (clock speed, CPU, etc.)

Mac Menu Bindings

Shows all the key bindings available with the Mac Menu in a separate window. See the Key Bindings section below.

Mac Menu Tutorial

Opens the tutorial file.

## Mac Shell Syntax

The Mac shell provides a command line facility analogous to the Tcl shell ('cmd-y') or the now obsolete Toolsever shell already available in Alpha. You can open it with the Mac Shell menu item or with the 'ctrl-cmd-y' key combination. This section lists all the commands available in the Mac Shell.

The main commands are 'help', 'files' and 'infos'. There are also commands which allow you to navigate in the MacOS files system: 'pwd', 'cd', 'ls', 'ld'. Additionally you have a few utility commands: 'empty', 'eject', 'restart', 'shutdown' which behave like the corresponding menu items. Please see the tutorial (choose Mac Menu Tutorial in the Get Info submenu) for real life examples.

Certain options are not handled from the command line though: if you want to specify additional conditions (as explained above) you should rather use the dialog windows.

If a command is not a specific Mac Shell command, MacMenu will try to evaluate it as a Tcl instruction. If no Tcl command is found, then it will try to execute it as a Unix command (only on OSX). This means that you can use Mac Shell as a Tcl shell and that you can execute Unix command directly from Alpha (see more precisions in the Unix commands section below).

### Shell prompt

The shell prompt always indicates the name of the current folder. When opening the shell, its value defaults to the Alpha application's main folder or to the currently logged in user's home directory (see the Default Home preference).

### 'help' command

The 'help' command can be used alone or with one of the following arguments:

help | to have a list of all available commands
help -options | to have a list of all available options and flags
help [cmdname] | to display info about a specific command

### 'files' command

The 'files' command is used with a subcommand to specify the type of action which is to be executed and flags to specify the conditions and options.

#### Options for the files command

Here is the signification of the various options. Some of them are required, the others have default values and can be omitted if not necessary.

-f filter | filtering regular expr | default '.*'
-s folder | source folder | default current folder
-l level | nesting level (0, 1,... or all) | default 0
-i flag | case sensitive? | default 0
-n flag | negate? | default 0
-t folder | target folder | no default
-t enc | target encoding in transcode | default iso8859-1
-t kind | target eol in transtype | default mac
-t type | file's type | no default
-c type | file's creator | no default
-o flag | force overwrite? | default: see prefs
-o enc | original encoding in transcode | default macRoman
-o kind | original eol in transtype | default unix
-r replace | regsub expr for renaming | default &
-all | all files (equivalent to '-f .*') | no value
-k flag | casing: u, l, w, f | default: not set
-d flag | numbering: 0/1 | default: not set
-b (m|c|s|k|l) | sort by | no default
-x m[.n] | truncate | default: not set

Note that the -c option is interpreted differently with the files change command than with the other files command: in the first case, it is the required option which tells which new creator should be assigned to the selected files. In the second case, it is an optional argument telling that only the files with the type declared by -c should be selected to perform the action.

Similarly the -t option is interpreted differently with the files change command than with the other files command:

- used with files change, it is the required option which tells which new type should be assigned to the selected files.
- used with files transtype, the -t flag designates the type of line endings for the file (mac, unix or win).
- used with files transcode, the -t flag designates the target encoding of the file.
- otherwise, it is the argument to indicate the target folder in a move, copy or alias action.

The -b flag (b stands for 'by') is used only by files list and allows you to specifiy a sorting option. The option is specified by one of the letters m, c, s, k, l which correspond respectively to sorting by Modification date, Creation date, Size, Kind, Labels.

It is essential that the filtering regular expression be enclosed in brackets if some characters are escaped. The brackets protect the escaped characters from being iterpreted by the Tcl interpreter before the regular expressions interpreter. For instance, to designate all files ending with a dot followed by one single number you want to use the following expression:

         .*\.\d

so you should write on the command line

        -f {.*\.\d}

If you do not enclose the regular expression in brackets, you must escape the characters twice i-e with a double backslash like this:

        -f .*\\.\\d

or

        -f ".*\\.\\d"

This remark concerns exclusively the regular expressions used on the command line: there is no need of brackets when you use the menu items and dialog windows.

If the -d flag is on (-d 1) the numbering will be done. There is no way to set the numbering options from the command line. The last used settings will be applied.

#### Subcommands of the 'files' command

Here is the list of the various subcommands you can append to the 'files' command together with the options they accept:

cmd | subcmds | options
files | copy | Required -t
|  | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -all
files | move | ditto
files | rename | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -c -r -all
files | transcode | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -o -t -all
files | transtype | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -o -t -all
files | list | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -b -all
files | duplicate | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -all
files | trash | ditto
files | lock | ditto
files | unlock | ditto
files | alias | ditto
files | change | Required -c and/or -t
|  | Optional -f -s -l -i -n -all
files | rmalias | Optional -f -l -all

### 'infos' command

The 'infos' command is used with a subcommand to specify the item about which information is required. Its syntax is:

infos file path
infos folder path
infos volume path
infos appl path
infos process processname
infos hardware

### Commands for browsing

Here are the commands which help you browsing in the files hierarchy, or list and edit files:

pwd

(print working directory) Prints the current directory. The name of the directory is used in the shell's prompt.

cd dir

(change directory) The 'cd' command lets you change the current directory. On OSX, the 'cd' command can resolve tilde and dot symbols at the beginning of a path (to designate the user's home directory or the current folder respectively like in any Unix shell). In can be used in different manners: lt))

cd

change to Alpha's folder or to the user's home directory depending on how the Default Home preference is set (see the Preferences section below)

cd .

change to directory of second to frontmost window (ie the window which is just behind the shell window). If there is no such window or if the window does not correspond to a file on disk, the command is equivalent to cd with no argument.

cd ..

change to parent directory.

To go several levels up, type .. followed by several separators (thus, .. is equivalent to ../). E-g:

         cd ..:::
         cd ..///

The following syntax is also accepted (except for [cd /] which changes directly to the root folder)

        cd :::         etc.
        cd ///         etc.

cd blah

change to subfolder blah of current folder (if blah exists of course)

cd abs_path

change to directory corresponding to the absolute path abs_path

mkdir dir

(make directory) Create a new subfolder in the current folder. If no name is specified, it will be Untitled.

edit file

(edit a file) Specify the name of the file: if it is in the current directory, the proc will complete the path. You can use the completion mechanism to enter the name of the file: type the first letters, then hit the Tab key. If the 'edit' command is used with no argument, you are prompted to select a file to edit.

ls

(list) Returns a list of all the files and folders contained in the current folder. On OSX, this command calls the ls Unix command, so you can use all its flags just like in a Terminal window.

ld

(list directory) Returns a list of the subfolders contained in the current folder.

### Other commands

empty | to empty the trash
eject | to eject a mounted removable volume
restart | to restart the computer
sleep | put the computer in sleeping mode
shutdown | to shutdown the computer
tutorial | to open the tutorial
bindings | to display a summary of the MacMenu key bindings
version | to get macMenu's version number

### Unix commands

On OSX, if a command hasn't been defined as a specific MacShell command and fails to be executed as a Tcl command, then MacShell attempts to invoke it as a Unix command. It does this using the exec Tcl command: this means that it will work only if it is a non interactive Unix command, i-e if it is a command which returns its result immediately without waiting for input from the user and which does not have to be terminated (by ctrl-D for instance). Otherwise Alpha will enter in an infinite loop.

Typical examples of commands which can be executed from MacShell are cal, date, df, ls, who, ps etc. But don't try to execute commands such as top, stats etc.

### Commands history

As with any Alpha shell, you can move through commands history with the 'up' and 'down' arrow keys while holding the 'control key' down. If you option-click in the title bar of the Mac shell, you also have a list of the last twenty command lines and you can select any of them which will be inserted in the shell.

### Extending Mac Shell

You can create your own commands to use in Mac Shell. To create a new command called mycmd, you must define a proc named macsh::mycmd and the value returned by this proc should be the text you want to be inserted in Mac Shell as a reply when the command is executed. If you want no reply, just return the empty string "". For instance:

        proc macsh::mycmd {} {
            return "myvalue"
        }

The proc macsh::mycmd can take parameters and arguments depending on what syntax you want for your command (subcommands, additional arguments, options etc.). Please see various examples in the files macMenuShell.tcl and macMenuInterface.tcl.

You can create as many new commands as you wish. These commands can be stored in a file like this one. The easiest solution is to locate this file in the MacMenu folder and to rebuild the Tcl indices to register your procs in Alpha. You must put the following instruction at the beginning of the file:

        namespace eval macsh {}

You can also provide help info about a command by defining an entry in the macsh_help() array. Its value must be a list of items corresponding to all the subcommands of mycmd. For instance, if you define

        set macsh_help(mycmd) [list "open [myoptions] [myarguments]" "close"]

the following line will be printed in MacShell when typing help mycmd

        mycmd open [myoptions] [myarguments]
        mycmd close

See more examples in the file macMenuShellMore.tcl.

## MacMenu programming interface

MacMenu provides procedures which can be used in Tcl scripts directly and make all the MacMenu capacities available programmatically (instead of via the dialogs interface). These procedures have exactly the same syntax as the commands described in the Mac Shell section: the only difference is that they must be executed in the macsh:: namespace. For instance, you can invoke, in a Tcl script, the command macsh::files like this:

    	macsh::files copy -f {.*\.tex} -t "/Users/bernardo/thesis"

The macsh::files and macsh::infos procs in particular provide exactly the same functionalities as the dialogs corresponding to the MacMenu menu commands.

## Completion mechanism

There is a pathname completion mechanism bound to the tabulation key (exactly like in most Unix shells).

Type the first letters of a file's or folder's name and hit the TAB key: the procedure will try to complete, looking either for the relative or absolute path of a file or folder included in the current folder. A complete path is supposed to start with a double quote in order to handle spaces in the path. These double quotes will be added automatically when necessary. If there are several possible choices, a pick list is displayed.

Note that you can use the symbols tilde and dot at the beginning of a path to designate the user's home directory or the current folder respectively like in any Unix shell. Mac Shell will do the substitution automatically.

## Getting info

The Get Info submenu allows you to get (and set) information about various kinds of elements: file, folder, volume, application, running process and the computer itself. The results are displayed in a dialog window.

All these information windows have a button called Get Text to edit the results in a separate text window.

When appropriate, if a specific piece of information has a value which can be set or modified, it is edited in an editable field or with a checkbox so that you can change its value. Use the Set button to validate changes.

The search of information can be slow on... slow machines. Note that the information about hardware will be sought by the package only the first time and recorded since it is not likely to change during a session.

Here is a list of the properties you can find in the info windows (not all properties apply to all items of course):

Owner | Logical size | Modification date
Locked | Version info | Logical page size
Shared | Creation date | Process partition
Comment | Launched from | Largest free block
Creator | Physical size | Minimum memory size
Version | Remote events | Owner's privileges
Capacity | User RAM size | Protected from move
ROM size | Stationery pad | System architecture
RAM size | Is share point | Low memory area size
Ejectable | System version | Allocated memory size
Boot disk | Virtual memory | Everyone's privilege
CPU family | Bus clock speed | Scripting terminology
Free bytes | Hardware vendor | Open Firmware present
Scriptable | Software vendor | Processor clock speed
Access path | Group privileges | Suggested memory size

Hardware info is not available on OSX.

## Key Bindings

There are a few easy to remember key bindings 'a la emacs'. Press 'ctrl-z', release, then hit one of the following letters:

a | aliases dialog
b | show bindings info
c | copy files dialog
d | duplicate files dialog
e | empty the trash
f | delete resource forks
j | eject a disk
k | lock files dialog
l | list files dialog
m | move files dialog
r | rename files dialog
t | send files to the trash
u | unlock files dialog

You can also use 'ctrl-cmd-y' to open the Mac Shell. Use the tabulation key to trigger the completion mechanism in Mac Shell (see above).

## Preferences

The Mac Menu Prefs... item in the Packages submenu of the Config menu allows you to set a few general options:

- the Overwrite If Exists flag concerns already existing files in the target folder during a move or a copy action. If this flag is set, you will not be warned about it. If not, you will have an error message indicating the name of the already existing file and the copy or move will attempt to proceed on the next subfolder: in this case no file will be overwritten. It is safer not to set this flag: there is a force overwrite checkbox in the copy and move dialogs to temporarily modify this behaviour when necessary.
- the Chunks Size variable is a number: it is the number of files which will be processed simultaneously during a copy or a move action. Due to Apple Events memory limitations, files have to be processed by chunks. I'm not sure what the optimal value should be. A default of 200 has proven absolutely safe with very long access paths : with shorter pathnames, it can be increased upto 300 and maybe more.
- the Additional Types variable lets you specify additional application signatures for the Creator popup in the Change Creator dialog window.
- the Predef Extensions variable lets you specify the extensions which will have a check box of their own in the Predef Exts dialog window.
- the Default Home preference specifies, in Mac Shell, where [pwd] should start from and where [cd] without argument should lead to. The possible choices are Alpha's folder or User's Home.

## Version History

- 1.0a - 01/01/13 - Created Mac Menu.
- 1.0b1 - 01/02/02 - First beta release of Mac Menu.
- 1.0b2 - 01/02/02 - Corrected a misplaced key binding.
- 1.0b3 - 01/02/26 - Corrected a bug with the 'sharing' button.
- 1.0b4 - 01/02/27 - Modified the make alias proc to allow to specify a target folder for the alias. Added a menu item to make a new folder in the current directory.
- 1.0b5 - 01/02/28 - Removed the New Folder item.
- 1.0b6 - 01/03/07 - Cosmetic changes: enlarged various fields in the dialog windows which were truncated with certain non-monospaced system fonts.
- 1.0b65 - 01/04/11 - Added a 'Change Type' item. Modified the 'files change' command in MacShell to accept a -t flag to change files types. Added an 'edit' command to MacShell. Added a 'help version' command. Corrected a bug when a volume was selected as a source or a target and a folder with the same name was created in the currfold. Added new syntax (cd :) in MacShell to 'cd' to parent directory.
- 1.0b66 - 01/04/11 - Added ellipses to most menu items.
- 1.0b7x - 01/04/04 - Made corrections for compatibility with the new 'file join' and 'file dirname' behavior. Includes the same features as the 1.0b6x series. Requires Alpha 7.5.
- 1.0b8 - 01/06/19 - Modifications for Alpha8 compatibility. Modified the behaviour of the AddOptions check box in renaming dialog.
- 1.0b81 - 01/06/19 - Bug fixed in mac::relFilename (thanks Frederic).
- 1.0b82 - 01/08/12 - Added a "Transtype Files" item to convert line endings (borrowed from Johan's file::convertLineEndings). Corrected a bug in mac::getItemSize which did not handle very big sizes (more than 0x7fffffff) due to Tcl arithmetic limitations: big sizes are now reported in megabytes. Corrected a bug when a target folder had to be created and intermediate subfolders did not exist: they are now all created.
- 1.0b83 - 01/08/23 - Reversed the order of Cancel and OK buttons in all dialogs for HIG-compliance. Minor correction in mac::pathLine (thanks Johan).
- 1.09 - 01/09/01 - First non beta release (for Alpha 7.4). See 1.1.
- 1.1 - 01/09/01 - First non beta release (for Alpha 7.5). Added capacity of sorting the list returned by 'list files' according to one of five criteria . ("modif date", "kind" etc.) Added a corresponding new -b flag in Mac Shell.
- 1.1.1 - 01/09/01 - Added error control in emptyTrash.
- 1.2 - 02/11/08 - Redefined doTranstype for compatibility with Alpha8. Added item to delete the resource fork of selected files.
- 2.0 - 03/08/22 - Major overhaul to upgrade to Alphax on OSX.
- 2.1 - 03/11/03 - Bug fixes with the Set button of File Info window.
- 2.2 - 03/11/18 - Eliminated unneeded -r flags in tclAE::send which slowed down some commands. Better error checking. Modified the syntax for the cd command in MacShell: it is simpler and more robust, it resolves tilde paths. New "Default Home" pref on OSX. Correctly quotes extensions in filter when they contain metachars. Fixed popup width problem introduced by OS Panther. Support for non-interactive Unix commands. New MacShell commands.
- 2.3 - 05/06/19 - Eliminated all OS8/9 specific code. Streamlined and factored the code for dialogs. Added transcoding facilities.

## Known problems

- I decided not to implement any erase command because it is potentially too dangerous: if you want to erase your disks, choose another tool ;-)
- It may happen that, though an action has been performed succesfully, its effect is not displayed immediately by the Finder.
- After long and intensive use, it happens that Alpha seems not to execute the Apple Events any more: it is a problem of memory management in old versions of Alpha. Just quit and relaunch the application to refresh it.

Please e-mail any problem or bug you encounter: bdesgraupes@easyconnect.fr

Goto the Alpha utilities page:

http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/bdesgraupes/alpha.html

## License and Disclaimer

(c) Copyright Bernard Desgraupes, 2001-2005 All rights reserved. This software is free software distributed under the terms of the new BSD license: Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- Neither the name of Bernard Desgraupes nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the regents or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

- Alias Files
- Application
  - Info
- Bindings
- bindings (shell command)
- cd (shell command)
- Change Creator
- Change Encoding
- Change Eols
- Change Type
- Completion
- Copy Files
- Delete Rez Forks
- Dialogs
  - Change Creator
  - Extensions
  - Information
  - Main
  - Renaming
  - Trash Files
- Duplicate Files
- Eject
- eject (shell command)
- empty (shell command)
- Empty Trash
- File
  - Info
- files (shell command)
- Folder
  - Info
- Hardware
  - Info
- help (shell command)
- History
- infos (shell command)
- Installation
- List Files
- Lock Files
- Mac Shell 1, 2
  - Extending
- Move Files
- Preferences
- Process
  - Info
- pwd (shell command)
- Remove Alias Files
- Rename Files
- Restart
- restart (shell command)
- Shut Down
- shutdown (shell command)
- Sleep
- sleep (shell command)
- Trash Files
- tutorial (shell command)
- Unix commands
- Unlock Files
- version (shell command)
- Volume
  - Info