Alias Director was written to make creating, using, and deleting aliases as easy as possible. To provide the maximum in speed and convenience, Alias Director makes extensive use of the drag-and-drop feature of System 7. While there is extensive Balloon Help provided, it is still advisable to read this document carefully to be sure you are fully aware of its feature set and how to access those features.
Note: New to version 3.1 is the ability to configure the drop keys for invoking Alias Director's myriad drag and drop options. However, for the sake of simplicity, the following describes the use of drag and drop using the default drop key settings.
Creating aliases:
To create an alias for an item ("item" in this document refers to anything that appears in the Finder--file, folder, disk, or partition--that you can normally create an alias for), drop the item onto the Alias Director icon. A dialog box will appear that contains the item's name in a field for editing, a pop-up menu for telling Alias Director where you want the alias it creates, and some buttons.
The menu contains three choices initially: Apple Menu Items, Desktop, and New Location…. To put an alias in a location ("location" refers to folder, disk or partition) listed in the menu, select it from the menu and click the Create button.
To add a location to the menu, select New Location…, go to the location you want to add, and click the Add Only button. To create an alias in a location without adding it to the menu, click the Save button.
Once you add a location to the menu, it will be there every time you use Alias Director, unless you choose to remove it.
If several items are dropped onto Alias Director, it presents them to you one at a time to process.
If you don’t want to dig down in your folders to get the file you want an alias for, just double click on Alias Director to start it and select the file, folder or disk for which you want an alias.
(For those that like to keep aliases on the desktop, but don't like the clutter, there is a checkbox to create the alias without an icon. For more on this, see the technical notes at the bottom.)
Although this feature alone makes life with aliases easier, there's lots more.
Now for the good part. Once you have used Alias Director as described above a few times, you will be able to use it in an automatic mode most of the time. The advantage to this mode is that you don't have to do anything in the dialog box, because it doesn't even appear.
To create an alias in the Apple Menu Items folder, just drag and drop the item onto the Alias Director icon and hold down the option key while releasing the mouse (hold for a second or two).
To create an alias on the desktop, just drag and drop the item onto the Alias Director icon and hold down the shift key while releasing the mouse.
If, instead of holding down the option key, you hold down a character key, Alias Director will attempt to put the alias in the first location on the menu that starts with that character. For example, I have a folder in my Apple Menu Items folder named “Applications”. To put an alias in this folder, I just drop the item onto the Alias Director icon while holding down the “a” key. That’s it. Alias Director creates an alias with the same name as the original item in Applications and quits, and I never see the box.
If several items are dropped for automatic aliases, they all go to the same place.
In the automatic mode, most problems are handled by showing a message and then skipping the file in question.
Since some of us use spaces to order items in the Apple menu, Alias Director looks for the first menu item whose first non-space character is the character you held down. Also, it only looks for the standard character for the key that was held down. So it will look for a folder that starts with "9" but not one that starts with "(". If it can't find a location starting with the character, it just puts up the usual box. Upper and lower cases are not distinguished in the testing, so don't hold down the shift key as you release the mouse, unless you want the alias created automatically without an icon (See below under Other Features:).
To create more than one alias of an item, check the "I'll Dismiss" box so that Alias Director box won't go away automatically after creating an alias, which is its default behavior. If you are creating aliases for more than one item, you'll need to uncheck "I'll Dismiss" to progress to the next item.
Other Features:
Alias Director also provides the following capabilities to improve your alias life:.
You can create an alias without an icon by checking the No Icon box in Alias Director's dialog box, or by holding down the control key while dropping the item on Alias Director.
Alias Director has a feature I call TrashEmAll. It will move a file (or folder) and all aliases to it on all mounted disks (if possible) to the trash if you hold down the command key as you drop the file (or folder) onto Alias Director. Nothing is deleted, just moved. You can drop either the original item or an alias to it. TrashEmAll will not move the Trash, System, Control Panels, Extensions, or Preferences folders, or disks to the trash, but it will move aliases to them to the trash. If you drop an item with the command key down for TrashEmAll, you'll get a dialog box that lets you confirm that action, or choose another.
You can add a folder or disk to the list of locations Alias Director will create aliases in by dropping it onto Alias Director while holding down the command, shift, and option keys.
You can bring the original of an item to the desktop by dropping an alias while holding down the command and shift keys. Some people may find that the item doesn't appear at the expected location. Don't ask me, talk to Apple.
Dropping an alias with the command and option keys down finds the original like the Find Original button in the Get Info… box does. Note that this feature uses Apple Events, and that Apple has promised the next major version of the finder will implement Apple Events differently, and that as a result, this feature will probably break eventually. It has been successfully tested with a beta version of System 7.1. Be sure to read the note below about v2.8.
Dropping an alias with the command and option keys down does a Get Info… on the original. Note that this feature also uses Apple Events, so ditto the above.
All drag and drop operations support dropping several things at once.
Configuring the drop keys is done using a couple of dialog boxes that are accessed by clicking on the Configure Drop Keys… button in the About box you see when you click on the logo in the main dialog box. As an example, to configure the drop keys for Find Original, first click on the Configure Drop Keys… button, then on the Find Original button. While the next box is visible, hold down the desired keys and click the mouse. If your choice is okay, click OK. Set as many as you wish and click Save when you're ready.
A few notes: You can use any combination of up to 4 keys for each action. Though the default settings use only modifier keys, ordinary "letter" keys will work as well. Therefore, you may want to use easy to remember combinations such as 'f'+'g' for Find Original, and 'd'+'f' to create an alias on the desktop. (Adjacent keys are easier to hold down.) Single characters work as well, but are not a good idea because they will override the automatic feature that uses the menu. For instance, if you have a folder named Applications in the Alias Director menu, and you use 'a' to drop an alias into the Apple Menu, you won't ever be able to drop an alias automatically into the Applications folder. Instead, use 'a'+'s' for the Apple menu. Or use any combination of modifiers (command, option, shift, and control) and letters. The only restriction is that the drop keys for an alias without an icon are "subtracted" from the set you hold down before determining what action to take. Thus it is a good idea to reserve the use of a modifier for that purpose only, or use a single character that you won't ever use for the first letter of a folder name, such as "," . The mechanism for recognizing which keys are being held down is really looking at the keys themselves. Hence "1" on a numeric keypad is seen as different from the "1" on the left side of the keyboard. The "1" on the keypad will be denoted by '1(KP)' as opposed to '1' . You can use the Configure Drop Keys… button to see what drop keys you're using in case you forget. There is no built-in checking to insure you don't use the same combination more than once, but if you do, it will only work for one.
Some thoughts:
It has been commented that the technique of using the first character of the folder name is limiting by nature. This is true, but the alternative is to present the dialog box each time, and remember, the goal is to make the whole procedure as fast and unobtrusive as possible. I currently have 10 locations I can stuff an alias into without seeing a dialog box.
Other comments refer to all the modifier key combinations needed to invoke the other features using drag and drop. Again, what's the alternative? You don't have to use them to access the features, but if you do something often enough, you'll learn the combination you need. This is a little easier now that I've made the drop keys user configurable.
I have had a few requests to alphabetize the menu. While this would make it look nicer, the current implementation allows the user to have more than one folder in the menu starting with the same letter, and decide which one will be the one for aliases to be placed in in automatic mode (Alias Director uses the first one it finds). I.e., this is a feature, not a bug.
Version History:
Version 2.1 29 April 1992
Functionally the same as 2.0, but provides some interface tweaking. The Cancel button now changes to Done if you've added anything to or from the menu, to reflect the fact that neither action can be undone. The name changes back to Cancel if another file is to be processed.
Version 2.2 4 May 1992
New to version 2.2 is the ability to move a file or folder to the desktop by dropping an alias for it onto Alias Director with the shift and command keys down. Please note: Since it isn't generally allowed to have two things on the desktop with the same name, I've provided a mechanism for handling the case where the alias "My File" on the desktop is an alias for "My File" which resides somewhere else. In this case, Alias Director will change the name of the alias to "My File 2" and then proceed to move the original to the desktop. If you plan to make use of this new feature, you may want to give the desktop alias a different name of your own choosing. The simplest thing to do would just be to add a space at the end, as in "My File ". Unfortunately, for some reason, if Alias Director renames an alias with a custom icon (as in the case of one with no icon), it confuses the finder, so it displays a generic icon until the next time the alias is double clicked on. Don't ask me why.
Version 2.3 6 May 1992
Set the locations of files moved to the trash by TrashEmAll so they would appear together in a neat column instead of all over the place in the trash. Also insures you can "Put Away" an original in the trash, even if it was in the trash when you used TrashEmAll.
Version 2.5
Users requested that I find a way to implement Alias Director's drag and drop TrashEmAll, move-to-desktop, and add-to-menu features without requiring the user to remember their key down requirements. So I did.
Version 2.6 13 May 1992
A few people noticed that some aliases created on the desktop wouldn't support drag & drop. This has now been fixed (I hope). As a part of that fix, the desktop is now a permanent choice on the menu. Also, a bug that could result in a freeze when creating an alias with no icon has been fixed.
Version 2.7 19 May 1992
The New Location… file directory box has been modified to be a little friendlier. And it won't jump any more.
Version 2.8 28 June 1992
A new Find… command has been added to find the original the way the finder does. This may well break when the next major upgrade to the finder comes out, but don't blame me, blame Apple. Also, there's a glitch in the Finder you may want to work around for this feature. After the original has been found, if the folder containing Alias Director is open, the Finder leaves it in a selected state. You can't drag and drop onto it until you have deselected it . The simplest workaround is to put AD in a folder that is closed all the time and use an alias for AD.
Version 2.8.1 24 July 1992
It used to be that if a folder or disk alias was hilited in the file directory box that comes up when you double click on Alias Director, the Open and Select buttons behaved as if it were a file (which technically it is), and if you clicked Select, it just opened the folder instead of selecting it. This has been fixed in 2.8.1.
Version 3.0 18 August 1992
This version goes over Alias Director with a fine-tooth comb.
There are better messages when an alias can’t be created (such as when the disk is locked or you don’t have access privileges). If an alias can’t be created in the desktop folder of a shared volume, it will create one in the active system disk’s desktop folder. The About box (accessed by clicking on the Alias Director logo in the top-left corner of the dialog box) has been cleaned up.
There is a new checkbox in the dialog box called “I'll Dismiss.” Use it to prevent Alias Director from automatically dismissing a dialog box after an alias is created so you can create more than one in a session for the same file.
Oh, one more thing. Version 3.0 has one other new "feature". Every 10 days, starting the 10th day after the first time you use it, it will remind you that it's shareware, and that you need to send in your shareware fee. When you send in your fee, you'll receive a registration code that will stop the reminders. I have reluctantly added this "feature" because so few people have been sending in their money. I've worked hard and long on Alias Director to make it a program people will find useful and well designed. I think it's worth what I ask for it and I think my time as a programmer is worth over $1/hour.
I hope you agree.
Version 3.0.1 9 Sept 1992
Someone brought it to my attention that Alias Director didn't copy the finder label from the original to the alias, so I fixed that.
There is now a "Register…" button in the About box--that you see when you click on the logo in the Alias Director dialog box--that allows you to register your copy of Alias Director as soon as you have received your registration code, instead of waiting for the next 10th day reminder. This would have been in version 3.0, but 3.0 was rushed to make a deadline for an Apple CD ROM.
Alias Director uses a different criterion to decide what kind of icon to put on a volume alias, so hopefully it will get it right more often.
Version 3.1 2 Oct 1992
Two new features are new to version 3.1. First, there's now an option to do a Get Info… on the original by dropping an alias on Alias Director. Second, and far more challenging to implement, is the ability to set the drop keys the way you want them.
As I sit here writing the changes for version 3.1, I want to say thanks to all the people who have sent in their shareware fees, many of whom have been generous enough to send more than I asked. I think I am almost up to minimum wage for my time. Special thanks also to those who took the time to include their impressions of Alias Director. Both are most appreciated.
Version 3.1.1 19 Oct 1992
Alias Director can now recognize an AppleShare remote volume, and a very minor bug affecting the filename field in Alias Director's main dialog box has been fixed. Function keys are now shown if you are defining one as a dropkey. A flicker that occurred when the main dialog box comes up should be gone.
Additional Notes:
It may be the case that aliases for some disks or certain special items won't have the right icon when the alias is created. (This is because Alias Director’s author doesn’t know enough to tell Alias Director how to do it.) If this is the case, the Finder will take care of it the first time you double click on the alias.
It seems that while the aliases created by AD work fine when double clicked, aliases for applications sometimes won't support drag & drop if created on a disk other than the one that has the original application. This shouldn’t be a problem in very many cases. If you need this, create the alias on the original’s disk and drag it to the desired folder.
Locations on the menu that AD can't find when it starts up (such as those that have been deleted or reside on unmounted disks) are grayed out and can't be selected. If you hold down the command and shift keys, any item can be selected for removal from the menu. This allows you to remove items that are no longer available.
Alias Director creates and uses a preferences file in the Preferences folder called AD Repositories. If you change the name or delete it, a new one will be created.
If a disk is inserted while the Alias Director dialog box is visible, Alias Director will mount the disk and make any locations residing on the disk available in the menu.
Balloon Help is available for everything, including the finder icon and menu items. Turn it on and check out everything, as it contains some helpful stuff.
Please let me know of any undocumented features (sometimes referred to as "bugs" by jealous programmers and irate users) so I can fix or document them.
Click on the name in the Alias Director box for the About… box. It contains a button that allows you to register (if you haven't already), and a button to configure the drop keys.
Hope you like it.
Alias Director is shareware. Shareware is try-before-you-buy-software. (It is not share-it-with-everyone-for-free software. That kind of software is called freeware.) If you like it and use it, please send the $8 shareware fee. As little as $8 seems, it really makes a difference--at least in my case--when people send it in. It took a lot of time to design, write, as well as to fix reported bugs. In case you're interested, it contains about 3800 lines of code. When you register, PLEASE let me know where you got it, and more important, WHAT VERSION you are registering. If you send an Email address, I'll Email your registration code to you.
Alias Director may not be included in any collection of shareware or public domain software without my express knowledge and permission. This is principally to insure that only the most recent version is used. You may, however, distribute it to your friends as long as it has not been modified and you include this Alias Director 3.1.1 Read Me document in its original form.
Laurence Harris
23 Hilltop MHP
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
919-933-9595
CompuServe: 76150,1027
AOL: LHarris
Internet: 76150.1027@compuserve.com
Technical Notes:
Alias Director creates aliases that are identical those created by Finder v7.0, but as mentioned above, sometimes application aliases for applications on another disk won't support drag & drop unless they are created on original disk and moved. This may or may not be changed in a future version of Alias Director. Future versions of the finder may do things a little differently in creating aliases, and as a result, a remote possibility exists that the aliases Alias Director creates won't work some future version of the finder. Since one would expect aliases created by Finder v7.0 to work with future versions of the finder this is not likely any time soon, but you are warned.
If you choose to create an alias without an icon, Alias Director gives the alias a custom icon that is blank. If at any time you want the normal icon to be displayed, just clear the blank icon as you would any custom icon by doing the following:
Select the alias; choose Get Info from the File menu in the Finder; click where the icon would normally appear in the Get Info box (to the left of its name); choose Clear from the Edit menu.
If you have been using an earlier version of Alias Director, the version number in the icon will not change until you rebuild your desktop file.
I have endeavored to make Alias Director as safe and robust as possible. Please inform me of any problems or bugs you encounter.
