Mac OS X Server 1.x: About the Workspace Manager

Note: This article pertains to Mac OS X Server versions 1.x, which were released prior to May 2001.

Key Differences from the Mac OS Finder

• You can move icons to the desktop from FileViewer windows. However, all icons placed on the desktop act like aliases instead of the original items. If an icon on the desktop represents an application, you can drop a document on it to launch (or activate) the application and have it open the document. You can remove items from the desktop by dragging them to the trash. This will remove the alias, not the original item that it pointed to.
• When you drag items between locations, you can force the creation of an alias rather than a copy by pressing the Control key while dragging. The Command key will force a move to be done, and the Option key will force a copy to be made. As on Mac OS, by default an item is copied if it crosses volumes or mount points and is otherwise moved.
• When renaming a file, you must press return after typing the new name or the change may not take effect. Also, you might see some display glitches in the filename if you delete characters while editing it.
• In this version of Mac OS X Server, a file's type is determined by the suffix in its name, instead of the type being invisibly stored by the filesystem as on Mac OS. If you rename a file and change its suffix, you might change which application will open it.
• You can use the option modifier key when double clicking a folder, or when using the tool bar, to reuse the same window instead of opening a new window.
• If you use the Goto panel (Command-g) to jump to a hidden directory (such as .OpenStep, or /usr), the File Manager shows all hidden files and directories whether you have selected the expert mode or not. To hide these files and directories again), then select the Update Viewers command in the Views menu (Command-u).

HFS Support

A significant addition since Developer Release 2 is support for HFS and HFS+ volumes. Because of the inherent differences in the capabilities of HFS and the Mac OS X Server filesystem (referred to as UFS below), there are issues that rise to the user level:

• When files are copied from HFS to UFS, any resource forks the files have will not be copied. In addition, their FinderInfo, including type and creator attributes, are lost as well. Workspace Manager will warn the user whenever they are moving files from HFS to UFS. It provides a "convert" option, which will try to add a suffix to the filename to match the type that it has under Mac OS.
• When files are copied from UFS to HFS, they will not have any type or creator when viewed by Mac OS.
• Files copied within HFS, or from one HFS volume to another, are handled correctly.
• When Workspace performs file manipulations on an HFS disk it does not consult or update the Desktop Database. This means that if you add, remove or move applications using Workspace and then use that disk under Mac OS, the Finder may report that it cannot find an application or not know about an application that you added. We recommend you do these operations under Mac OS (including MacOS.app, a.k.a. the "Blue Box").
• Although Workspace Manager hides hidden files on HFS volumes for non-expert users, this is not the case for hidden folders.

Known Issues

• Japanese users should consult the Japanese-specific release notes, especially regarding string encodings and HFS filesystems.
• Workspace Manager will not prevent the user from starting simultaneous file operations that may interfere with each other (e.g., copying a directory tree that is also being removed). Avoid initiating multiple operations that apply to the same set of files.
• Workspace is only able to initialize an entire disk, not an individual partition. Whenever Workspace initializes a disk, all data in all partitions of that disk is lost. To initialize a multi-partition disk, you will need to invoke the eject command on all but one partition, which unmounts them from the desktop. You may than select the last available partition, and choose the Initialize command.
• If an application fails to launch or crashes, there is no error message given by Workspace, other than an entry in the console window.
• It isn't possible to distinguish between HFS (Mac OS Standard) and HFS Plus (Mac OS Extended) disks in the Workspace.
• When presenting a message about an IDE hard disk, Workspace may refer to it as a SCSI disk. An example of this is seen on G3 systems with IDE/ATA disks.
• If you insert a removable disk that is locked and is either uninitialized or in a format Mac OS X Server does not recognize, it will be ejected without any error message. If you unlock the disk, you will be able to initialize it.
• Icons on the desktop (which are aliases) cannot be renamed. Furthermore, renaming the original of an alias on the desktop causes the desktop icon to disappear when the alias is next clicked because the original is not available.
• Filenames can contain spaces, but inserting spaces in filenames will probably produce issues within Project Builder projects.
• Sometimes creating a new folder can put you in "Expert mode", where files that are normally hidden become visible, such as Unix directories or files beginning with a period. If this happens, you can use the Update Viewers command to restore correct behavior (command-u).
• The Goto panel only works if you have a browser window open.