The System 7 Finder seems to have a bug in the way it handles aliases. When an alias points to an application on a different volume, it may lose its ability to have files dropped on it. Although people will often tell you to rebuild your desktop database when you have trouble launching things, in this case rebuilding the desktop actually *causes* the problem. I wrote Alias Dragon as a tool to fix this problem, until the next time you rebuild your desktop. Alias Dragon works by scanning for application aliases that point to different volumes, and copying information from the desktop database of the target to the desktop database of the alias.
There are three ways to operate Alias Dragon:
• Drop a volume or volume alias on it. Under System 7.1 or later, you can also drop a folder on it; I don’t think this works under 7.0 or 7.0.1, due to another Finder bug. Note that scanning a folder actually looks at all files in the folder, even those that are nested inside other folders. In System 7.5.3 or later, you may drop individual application aliases on Alias Dragon.
• Launch Alias Dragon and then choosing a command from the File menu.
• Use AppleScript. You can use a script like:
tell application "Alias Dragon"
activate
open {alias "Main:App Aliases:", alias "Comm:"}
end tell
Note that each path must end in a colon, to indicate that it refers to a directory rather than a file.
You may have to close and reopen folders, or even restart your Mac, before the aliases function again.
If an alias points to a removable volume that is ejected or not mounted, or to a server volume that is not mounted, then Alias Dragon will not attempt to mount the target volume. So, if you do want to fix aliases that refer to remote or removable volumes, make sure those volumes are mounted before running Alias Dragon.
In Systems before 7.5.3, you can’t drag some individual aliases and drop them on Alias Dragon. This is impossible due to the way that Finder handles aliases. When you drop an alias on something, Finder finds the target of the alias, and then passes the target file to the application. The application never knows that you dropped an alias rather than the real thing. On the other hand, for the same reason, you *can* drop an alias to a folder or volume on Alias Dragon, to have the application aliases in that folder or volume fixed.
Known limitations:
* Alias Dragon will not scan a diskette, nor will it fix an alias whose target is on a diskette. This is due to the fact that a diskette does not have a normal desktop database.
* Alias Dragon will not scan a volume or folder that contains more than 32767 files. However, you’d have a hard time fitting that many files on a volume.
About the PowerPC:
I tried making a “fat” version of Alias Dragon for PowerPC use, but it was not noticeably faster. Presumably, that is because it spends the vast majority of its time reading from the disk rather than computing.
Alias Dragon is free, and may be freely distributed so long as you don’t charge for it, and this document continues to accompany it.
