Mac OS X assorted tips: Disk Image location; Explorer downloads; Interface Builder; ForkSwitcher

Disk image location on desktop We have noticed that when we mount a disk image file, it most commonly appears on the desktop at the very bottom of the screen, half hidden behind the dock. If you don't look carefully, you may mistakenly conclude that the disk has not appeared at all.

Getting Explorer to use the "right" desktop We set the download location for Explorer files to the Desktop. However, they never showed up on the desktop. It turned out that we still had two desktop folders in our home directory - an out-of-date one left over from the Public Beta and stored in the Library folder - and the active one at the root level of the Home directory. Explorer persisted in placing files in the defunct old one, regardless of my Preferences selection. The only solution was to Trash the Desktop folder in the Library folder. Then, Explorer finally installed the downloads in the desired location.

Interface Builder We have commented several times on PropertyList Editor as a useful troubleshooting application included on the Developer CD. The second most useful app from the CD may turn out to be Interface Builder. It gets launched if you double-click on a ".nib" file - as found inside the packages of many applications. Here you will get to see many of the screens that get generated by the application. It is a bit like using ResEdit in Mac OS 9 (see also previous reference).

Using ForkSwitcher to convert font files Font files in Mac OS 9 contain both a data fork and a resource fork. Although Mac OS X can still work with these fonts, it prefers font files that do not contain a resource fork (as this is no longer an actively supported feature in Mac OS X). Apple has a utility called ForkSwitcher that you can use to convert a traditional Mac OS 9 font to one that uses the new Mac OS X (dfont) format. From the Fork Switcher Read Me file:

One of the innovations offered by Mac OS X is that font suitcases can now be stored in a file's data fork, rather than its resource fork. This trick allows more efficient access to font data as well as the ability to move font suitcases back and forth on non-resource-fork-savvy file systems.

Data fork suitcases must have the extension '.dfont'. They may optionally be given the file type 'dfon'.

For the purposes of ForkSwitcher, resource fork suitcases must have the file type 'FFIL', which has been used to identify font suitcases on the Mac OS for over a decade. In point of fact, fonts can be installed on the Mac OS which are not inside a font suitcase; such fonts are not supported by ForkSwitcher.