Possible to port OS 9 finder to OS X?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Is it possible to had a OS 9 type finder for OS X?

I thought I read a year or so ago that it couldn't be done.



I'm not complaining about the current finder, just curious if it could be done...

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    OS 9 type finder ? what kind of type would you want ?
  • Reply 2 of 14
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    The Finder is running in Classic, and a while a go I saw a trick to open stuff on the desktop while classic is running.



    Barto
  • Reply 3 of 14
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    I wouldn't be surprised if porting the OS 9 Finder to Carbon were very difficult simply due to its "crusty" old code. But an OS 9 style finder would probably be relatively easy.



    Actually, you can configure the OS X Finder to work pretty much like the OS 9 Finder (save the way it remembers widow settings -- something I still find a PITA).
  • Reply 4 of 14
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,401member
    Well, I mean a finder where you can have the actual applications sitting on the desktop just like you can in OS 9.
  • Reply 5 of 14
    That's not a Finder issue per se. You can do this in OS X, it's just that for the software update process, it looks in the Applications folder for the older versions of apps to update.
  • Reply 6 of 14
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    What do people have against the current Finder? What is so wrong that they would actually wish to use the POS from OS 9 (something I wouldn't wish upon anyone.)



    I like Jaguar's Finder. My only complaints: the fake toolbar doesn't mimic the Cocoa one precisely, it's not Cocoa, and it doesn't organize files/folders like it used to in 10.1 when in icon view (odd spaces where names take two lines.) Okay, the first two are just me nitpicking. The last is the only real problem.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,401member
    Spart,



    The OS X finder is ok. I wasn't complaining about it, just wondering why it was different than OS 9's. Somebody before you answered my question.
  • Reply 8 of 14
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Sure you could create a similar app, but not the same. You wouldn't want to have directories like /etc shown per default, would you?
  • Reply 9 of 14
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    In 10.1 or 10.0.x I read you could open the 9 Finder simply by telling it to open in AppleScript! But if you tried copying X Applications it wouldn't copy them right, for example. Interesting though.
  • Reply 10 of 14
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    [quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:

    <strong>I wouldn't be surprised if porting the OS 9 Finder to Carbon were very difficult simply due to its "crusty" old code. But an OS 9 style finder would probably be relatively easy.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    The Finder in Mac OS X is a port of the Mac OS 9 Finder. It's got a lot of stuff added, and been improved dramatically (especially with Jaguar), but it is still a port.



    Barto
  • Reply 11 of 14
    [quote]Originally posted by Barto:

    <strong>



    The Finder in Mac OS X is a port of the Mac OS 9 Finder. It's got a lot of stuff added, and been improved dramatically (especially with Jaguar), but it is still a port.



    Barto</strong><hr></blockquote>



    But it behaves so differently on a fundamental level. Even though it was a test of Carbon and was (apparently) modified to be able to behave like the old Finder, I'm skeptical that it was a direct port. I dunno. I know they had a modified OpenStep workspace manager in the early developer previews, but somewhere around DP4 or the Public Beta they moved to this Carbon one. I can't remember what the timeline was, how feasible it was to write a new app in that timeframe so I could be wrong. Seems like if they port the old finder though, they broke a lot of little stuff that I wouldn't think would be broken in the transition.
  • Reply 12 of 14
    The current Finder is not really a port in the strictest sense. A great deal of the Finder was written from scratch for Mac OS X, but some of the very low-level file handling code, disk mounting code, etc. was "ported" or carbonized. Apple said that it was doing this rather than using the cocoa Workspace.app because it needed to prove to developers that Carbon was a feasible framework for mission-critical app development.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    engpjpengpjp Posts: 124member
    [quote]Originally posted by Spart:

    <strong>What do people have against the current Finder? What is so wrong that they would actually wish to use the POS from OS 9 (something I wouldn't wish upon anyone.)



    I like Jaguar's Finder. My only complaints: the fake toolbar doesn't mimic the Cocoa one precisely, it's not Cocoa, and it doesn't organize files/folders like it used to in 10.1 when in icon view (odd spaces where names take two lines.) Okay, the first two are just me nitpicking. The last is the only real problem. </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Out of (real, not feigned) interest, please specify the reasons you have for calling the OS9 GUI a POS. And kindly don't include arguments about multitasking or stability; that is not what I ask about.



    engpjp
  • Reply 14 of 14
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    [quote]Originally posted by Brad:

    <strong>The current Finder is not really a port in the strictest sense. A great deal of the Finder was written from scratch for Mac OS X, but some of the very low-level file handling code, disk mounting code, etc. was "ported" or carbonized. Apple said that it was doing this rather than using the cocoa Workspace.app because it needed to prove to developers that Carbon was a feasible framework for mission-critical app development.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    It was also reportedly a port of MetroWerks' PowerPlant classes, to make sure they were ready for OS X.



    Apple has their own toolset now, but CodeWarrior and PowerPlant are still critical to the platform, and will remain so for a long time.
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