Re: Fwd: Mac OS Alias file links

[Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com>]

On 2014-04-14 at 13:42, Charles Berry wrote:
> The point of using an alias rather than a filename or the name of a
> symbolic link that points to the file is that it inherits the property
> of Mac OS X aliases that moving the file does not break the alias ---
> it still points to file.

Exactly!

> For this to work as you fantasize, you would need to enable the Finder
> application to modify the part of the *.org file that encodes the
> alias when you change the location of the aliased file just as the
> Finder does to the alias when the location of the aliased file is
> modified in the Finder.

I don't think so. I'm not sure how BibDesk handles it, but my BibTeX
file is not modified when I move the PDF that is linked to an entry via
that 1200 character field that encodes the alias. Clearly BibDesk does
something neat to encode and decode that field, but once created, the OS
nor Finder know anything about that line or the file containing it. I
don't think Finder would need to know about a string in an Org file
either.

> OTOH, writing an AppleScript to make an alias in a folder that is
> never moved, writing elisp to call that script and then make an
> org-mode link to the alias just created might work for you.

Yes this would work too as a hack.

  -k.