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Better Software for Apple Mac osx

Can I run version 7 and version 8 side-by-side?v7v8

Yes. The only limitation is that the Finder hotkey will automatically launch version 8 rather than version 7 if it is installed.

Will my version 7 droplets continue to work with version 8?v7v8

Your version 7 droplets will continue to launch version 7 as their host application. Version 7 and version 8 have different capabilities and you can thus not "upgrade" your droplets to use version 8. You can, however, run both version 7 and version 8 side-by-side.

All Leopard problemsv7v8

If you are using Leopard you should upgrade to the latest version of A Better Finder Rename.

I'm experiencing crashes with version 8.15 and laterv8

Some people have been experiencing crashes with the latest 64-bit garbage collected architecture used by recent releases. Generally speaking the latest releases offer far better performance and stability than the releases based on the old 32-bit architecture, but this is still fairly cutting edge technology and some third party software assumes that all Mac programs still use the older architecture, which can cause trouble.

We are currently investigating the crashes jointly with Apple, but for now, you might pefer going back to the 8.1.4 release which is still available for download.

If you are affected, please contact us.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Where has the "A Better Finder Rename..." context menu gone?v7

Apple in their infinite wisdom have decided that non-Apple context menu plug-ins should not appear in the main context menu and have relegated them into the "More" submenu at the bottom of the context menu.

Version 7 is still showing up in the Finder context menuv8

Version 8 and version 7 can coexist on the same machine, which is why they both show up in the menu. If you want to remove v7, you need to:

1) move the A Better Finder Rename 7 application into the wastebasket
2) remove the net.publicspace.abfr7.plist file from your {My Home Folder}:Library:Preferences folder

Upgrading woes?v7v8

If you have accidentally overwritten your existing ABFR version with a newer update, that would force you to pay for an upgrade fee, you can download an older version from this page.

For downgrading from version 7 (or later) to an earlier version, please refer to the relevant section of the installation page.

How to Uninstall?v7v8

Follow the instructions on the installation manual page.

Problems during start up.v7v8

A Better Finder Rename stops working after a while or just after an upgrade. This indicates corrupted or incorrect startup files:

If you experience this problem, there is a simple solution to it:

1) quit the application if it is running

2) go to Home:Library:Preferences (where Home is your personal home folder)

3) go to Home:Library:Preferences (where Home is your personal home folder)

4) remove the "net.publicspace.abfr7.plist" (or "net.publicspace.abfr8.plist") files if they exist

5) remove the "A Better Finder Rename Pref" file (if it exists)

6) restart ABFR; it should work now

If you are using Suitcase or a similar utility to managed fonts, make sure that you have all the "necessary" system fonts. A Better Finder Rename 8.15 and later are 64-bit applications and those crash upon launch if you've removed the standard fonts for any reason.

After renaming the files they no longer open properly!v7v8

Don't worry, you haven't lost any data. You have probably simply removed the file extension and Mac OS X no longer knows what type of document your file represents.

You can resolve this by adding the original file extension (say .jpg) to the end of the file names. They should then open properly again.

I'm confused because file extensions (.jpg, .txt, etc.) appear or disappear.v7v6

File extensions can be tricky on Mac OS X. Under certain conditions the Finder hides file extensions: they are still there, but cannot be seen in the Finder.

You can find out the real name of a file by selecting it in the Finder, and choosing "Get Info..." from the "File" menu. The "true" name of the file can be seen in the "Name & Extension:" field.

A Better Finder Rename always shows the full name of the file, so drag & dropping the files into the preview window will also do the trick.

In general, your selection in the "Change:" popup menu determines whether ABFR will change only the file name (everything before the first period) or the file name and the extension.

You can force the Finder to always show file extensions by ticking the "Show all file extensions" check box in the "Preferences..." menu of the Finder.

You can show or hide file extensions for individual files by (un-)ticking the "Hide extension" check box in the Finder's "Get Info". A Better Finder Attributes allows to perform this operation for multiple files

Problems renaming large numbers of files?v7v8

The Mac OS X Finder can be very slow when you select more than a hundred or so files. This is especially noticeable when you use context menus. For each selected file the Finder needs to create an "AppleEventDescriptor Record" that it forwards to the context menu (or the launching application). When you select a lot of files (say a couple of hundred) the Finder can take a lot of time doing this. There is a simple solution. Instead of selecting all the files in the folder, select the folder and use the "Process subfolders and their contents" feature.

How do I go about transferring files to a Windows machine?v7v8

You can use A Better Finder Rename's "Convert to valid NTFS/SMB file name" feature to ensure that your file names are valid for Windows NTFS volumes.

You may still encounter some problems when transferring files over an SMB (remotely mounted Windows drives) connection to the Windows machine. These problems are due to two factors: invisible files and SMB bugs.

You can remove invisible files before transferring your files by using A Better Finder Attributes (the companion product to A Better Finder Rename); Mac OS X's SMB implementation is plagued by bugs, but you may not run into them. If you do run into them the best course of action is to "compress" the files you want to transfer into a single zip archive using the Finders "Compress" feature, transfer the archive and then unzip it on the other side.

When renaming files I get the "You may not have sufficient access privileges.." error message.

This error message covers all cases where A Better Finder Rename attempts to rename a file, but the operating system refuses to do so.

There's a number of reasons why this can happen:

  • you don't have sufficient access privileges

On Mac OS X every file and every folder is protected by a security scheme that limits who can perform which operations on them. This is governed by so called "Access Privileges". If don't have sufficient access privileges, you won't be able to change the name of the file.

You can find out (and potentially change) what your access privileges are by selecting the file(s) in the Finder and choosing "Get Info..." from the "File" menu. The relevant information is in the "Sharing & Permissions" section.

  • the file is locked

There is a flag on Mac OS X that allows files to be protected against changes. If it is set, A Better Finder Rename will not be able to rename the file. You can unlock a file by going to the Finder and choosing "Get Info..." from the "File" menu. The relevant information is in the "General" section.

  • the file is on a read-only media

You are trying to change the names of a file on CD or DVD, which is of course impossible.

  • the file is on an incompatible external drive or unsupported remote file system

Mac OS X has a "native" file system that is called "HFS+ (Journaled)". This is the basis for all file manipulations and in theory all other file systems that Mac OS X knows about should behave in exactly the same fashion.

Other file system do of course have different constraints on file names, on path lengths, maximum file sizes, etc. but these differences should be hidden by the file system driver, so that you don't need to know about them.

Unfortunately the quality of some of those file system drivers is not always what it should be and as a result you can run into problems and you might get the above error message.

You can work around most of these problems by attempting to use a different file system "renaming mechanism".

There are occasionally problems with Buffalo TeraStations which come pre-installed with an awkward proprietary file system that limits the length of the absolute paths that can be used. Please consult Buffalo's website for instructions on how to set up your TeraStation for use with a Mac.

Another frequent culprit are Flash Cards. These drivers are extremely poor and it is much safer to move the files to your Mac's hard drive before changing any names.

When I try to add certain files to the preview table the program refuses to add them.

The short explanation is that it doesn't work and it shouldn't work.. or read the long explanation.

Something isn't working and I have FruitMenu, WindowShade X, Labels X or anything else using Unsanity's Application Enhancer installed.

With Application Enhancer installed, all bets are off. This is "wicked cool" software specifically designed to undermine OS X's built-in protection features.

Uninstall it and see whether the problem persists.

Blaming other people for your bugs is plain bad manners, so in our defense let us quote George Warner from Apple Developer Technical Support:

Our (Apple's) official policy is that we don't support APE'd systems. Period. The data miner that parses all the crash logs that are sent to us automatically ignores any report that has APE api's in the backtraces or dylb lists.

Likewise If DTS receives a crash incident with API in the backtrace or dylb list we will not investigate it. Our "standard answer" in this case is to inform the developer that we don't support APE and that we'll only be able to help them if they can reproduce the problem without APE installed.

I would suggest that you do the same for your "user X". ;-)

Trouble with tab delimited file listsv7

This is probably the most difficult to use feature in the program as it requires some knowledge about Mac OS X internals and rigorous attention to detail.

There are two major sources of problems:

  1. the file list loads fine but nothing happens!
  2. an error message appears when I load my file list

The first problem is easily resolved. The program loads the entire file list, but does not automatically add the files and folders in the list to the preview!

You need to drag & drop the files you want to rename into the preview list as usual. The program will then use the associations in the file list to determine the correct new names. This is done for consistency with the other renaming features and allows you (if you desire to do so) to perform a partial rename, ie. rename only some of the files in the file list.

The error message in the second problem may have a number of different reasons but all indicate that your file list is incorrect.

Re-read the instructions in the manual carefully: this is one area where details really are important!

The most common errors are:

  • the left hand part is not a complete POSIX path, but only the old name. This won't work, the left hand column needs to contain the complete POSIX path
  • the file that the POSIX path points to does not exist. Spelling mistake? File deleted?
  • you have a slash in your file name. Carefully re-read the section on the "forward slash" translation.
  • if you are having trouble with international characters, make sure your file is encoded as UTF8 (and not MacRoman, etc)

If you still can't figure out what's wrong, please email us at support@publicspace.net and don't forget to attach your file list and the full text of the error message that you receive. I will try to answer as quickly as possible, but it may take a day or two..

Chinese characters turning up when you are renaming mp3s?

Some recent mp3 encoders now encode id3 tags as big-endian UTF-16 characters. The "byte order" is different and this leads older versions of A Better Finder Rename to incorrectly interpret the text as Chinese characters. You need to upgrade to version 7.9.9 or later where support for this feature was added.

Any other bug at all. Especially right after a new version is released.

Email us immediately! It could be that many other people have the same problem. We can only fix the problems that we know about.

We do test each version carefully before a release, but with so many different factors (OS version, installed products, specific hardware, installers, builds, etc..) to consider, it is always possible that a bug does get into a release.

Unfortunately occasionally a bug affecting all users goes unreported for days and causes no end of frustration for everyone. Simply dropping us a line would allow us to fix the problem immediately.. don't be afraid of getting in touch!