can spotlight be made to see the Library?

[Zane Barker]

[Mark Palmos] “simple things easily done on a PC”

Last time I tried to do a search on a WinXP machine it took so so long I that I went and found the file manually.

[Mark Palmos] “What I was saying was not wining for the sake of it”

No offense but it sure did sound like it.

[Mark Palmos] “What is irritating is the way some people have a kind of religeous defense of a bit of hardware. So much so that it blocks their ears and prevents empathy.”

I was actually defending software. And I am sorry but how can one be empathetic to something I don’t really think is a big deal.

You feel that something could be more convenient to you, I know it can be unpleasant.

I like to think of it like this. Car companies put a hood on the car to help keep me from messing the engine up (because you know I would if I tried) at the same time Apple has put things in places they feel appropriate so that most people will not mess with them. Now nether the car company or Apple are going to prevent you from getting in there if you really want to. They just make you pop the hood so to speak to get there.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[Mark Palmos]

car’s and hood’s hmmm. Thats a pretty good analogy. If you feel confident, you can open the hood and do what you want. Thats what I would like. Apple lock the hood and I really hate that… but not entirely surprising from a company who still believe one mouse button is enough for their target market…

what about my permissions story. I mean in my ignorance I completely buggered my computer and had to get an expert in to allow me access to any part of my computer… all from pressing a few buttons easily found in the settings, with NO warnings at all…

todays gripe is im on the net at home on my macbook pro but cant see my home network at all (windows computers)

the problem as i see it is osx is a bastardisation of a hugely powerful unix platform and the old EZ is good and users must be protected from themselves mentality. But it has not been smoothed out and inconsistencies like this show up. Im sure it will be smoothed out in time to come.

anyhoo, tx for the conversation… atb
mark

[Vipul Vaid]

You can do exactly what you wanted to under Leopard.

I was wondering about the same thing. I needed to search and access the ~/Library/Scripts folder to fine tune and create triggers for some iTunes Dougscripts. A Google search brought me here and then on to <https://db.tidbits.com/article/9283> “Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great” by Matt Neuburg. He lucidly describes how Leopard search can be fine tuned to search spotlight comments, hidden files and system folders amongst other search criteria.

Fire up the Search Finder with Option-Command-Space. Search ‘This Mac’ ‘Contents’ and click the ‘+’ sign on the right of that bar. The default Search attribute is ‘Kind’ so to change it scroll down to ‘other…’, where you can select files by numerous user selected Search Attributes – including visibility, system files, hidden extensions, spotlight commented files, alternate display names etc. Select the ones you will be using regularly and then tick the search criteria you want as your selection criteria instead of searching by ‘Kind’. If you require more fine tuning click the ‘+’ sign again and select another set of rules. If you option-click the ‘+’ you are given options to search by ‘any’ or ‘all’ the criteria you specify.

You can save the search criteria in your Saved Searches. HTH.

Have fun!!!

~~ViShVa~~

[Mark Palmos]

[Vipul Vaid] “The default Search attribute is ‘Kind’ so to change it scroll down to ‘other…’,”

Hi there Vipul,
Thanks, that is very useful.
It’s quite clunky, but does the trick.
You have to do this every time, so you cannot set it as a preference and have it search system files every time. It also defaults to “dont include” which must be changed to include – but its better than nothing for sure.
Cheers,
Mark.