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jmatero · Mar 23, 2001, 11:34 AM

Why the hell doesn't Uncle Steve want us to go vertical?

Has anyone gone Vertical with the dock?

rtamesis · Mar 23, 2001, 11:36 AM

I have. I first pin the dock at the end so that the trash can will be at the lower right hand corner, then I choose Right.

jeffhot · Mar 23, 2001, 11:40 AM

so this is just a choice now, right? we don't have to use the terminal to change pref values? I saw one sceen shot that shows an orientation pop-up menu.

griffman · Mar 23, 2001, 11:51 AM

you have to use the terminal once to edit a plist file, then you get the pop-up settings. the terminal editing commands are in about 2,300 other threads here; search on "dock orientation" postings since two days ago ;-).

-rob.

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Mar 23, 2001, 11:52 AM

you can use a terminal hack to introduce those contextual menu options for the dock. Works beautifully. Put it on the side and use the "suck" minimizer.....

zengravy · Mar 23, 2001, 11:52 AM

Are you experiencing any problems with the vertical dock? I saw some screenshots where the topmost icon was obscured by the menu bar at the top...

Kristoff · Mar 23, 2001, 11:52 AM

unfortunately, your settings seem to not be saved upon logout.

Mar 23, 2001, 11:55 AM

vertical is the only way to go! even if you have to switch it back each time you log in.

web pages, word documents, etc are generally longer than they are wide, so having the dock at the bottom of the screen is a big waste of usefull space. there always seems to be a little extra room on the right hand side of the screen so that's where my dock goes.

rtamesis · Mar 23, 2001, 11:59 AM

It's actually a hack. Look in one of the threads here regarding Dock orientation on how to do that. I booted into my OS 9.0.4 partition and used BBEdit Lite to make changes to the Dock.app rather than use the Terminal.

[This message has been edited by rtamesis (edited 03-23-2001).]

absmiths · Mar 23, 2001, 12:03 PM

Can I just use the Plist editor? Do I have to use the terminal?

Ghoser777 · Mar 23, 2001, 12:09 PM

Originally posted by absmiths:
Can I just use the Plist editor? Do I have to use the terminal?

U can't actually edit the plist, and this really pisses me off. For whatever reason, every time the dock starts up, it overwrites any options in the plist about orientation and pinning with the default settings. So if you just do a "defaults write com.apple.dock orientation right" you won't get any results - u have to kill the dock for those changes to take effect... but oh wait, the dock overwrites the changed parts of the plist when it starts up. This is really really annoying. Does anyone know a way to send contextual menu commands when the dock starts up? (aka the user doesn't actually have to right click on the dock and choose their pin and orientation settings - the program will do it for them).

F-bacher

johnnylundy · Mar 23, 2001, 12:50 PM

Originally posted by jmatero:
Why the hell doesn't Uncle Steve want us to go vertical?

Has anyone gone Vertical with the dock?

Definitely. Right side, pinned to the bottom (end) so that the trash doesn't move, way cool. This has no bugs; it should have just been included. Typical Apple - they still haven't put enabling of scroll arrows (both at both ends) in the OS 9 prefs - you have to change it with a 3rd party util. Note I am not speaking of hacks here - it is fully funcitonal bug-free features that Apple just ignores.

foamy · Mar 23, 2001, 01:03 PM

U can't actually edit the plist, and this really pisses me off. For whatever reason, every time the dock starts up, it overwrites any options in the plist about orientation and pinning with the default settings.

Hmm.... I wonder if you can lock the com.apple.dock.plist file?

I'll try when I get to work.

torifile · Mar 23, 2001, 01:13 PM

The only reason you've got to use the terminal is because you need to have root privs when you make the changes. So you don't HAVE to be use the terminal, textedit will do, but only if you log in as root (which is not recommended). You've only got to launch textedit as root to make the changes. That's what the sudo/open -e does. The reason you can do it in OS 9 without problems is because OS 9 doesn't respect privs and you can change any files you want.

[This message has been edited by torifile (edited 03-23-2001).]

Ernie · Mar 23, 2001, 04:01 PM

I searched all over the place on this site (and others) and cant seem to find the instructions to make the dock vertical. Speaking for those of us who would LOVE to make the dock vertical, could someone post them here again?

Thank you!

foamy · Mar 23, 2001, 04:54 PM

You couldn't find it b/c it isn't here. It's on wincent.org
http://wincent.org/forums/showthread...42&threadid=37

rtamesis · Mar 23, 2001, 06:54 PM

This is from the General Discussion forum posted by stinkyjoe:

1. Boot OS 9.1 (or 9.0.4 if you have it on a separate partition).

2. Select the Dock.app (in System/Library/Core Services) while holding down the control key to reveal a contextual menu. Select View Package contents. If you are booted into OS 9.0.4, you can just open the Dock.app folder.

3. Copy the file Dock.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/DockMenus.plist onto your 9 hard disk and make a backup copy. Then open the original (on your 9 drive) with a texteditor (e.g. BBEdit Lite).

4. Find the text 1013. Replace the text "<key>command</key>" that appears ABOVE the text "1013", with"<key>menu</key>"

5. Do the same with the text above"1014".

6. Save the file as text.

7. Now replace the original plist.

8. Reboot into X and click near the separator until the menu comes up. There you go...much nicer.

Kristoff · Mar 23, 2001, 07:06 PM

you don't have to boot into 9.1!!!

Just su to root and edit the file.

rtamesis · Mar 23, 2001, 08:07 PM

There's the Unix cgi way of doing things (using Terminal.app) and there's the GUI Classical Mac way.

jlee · Mar 23, 2001, 08:37 PM

OK guys,

This is UNIX, right? There should be a way to script the modification to happen automatically on login. Think different, right?

I could do this in a heartbeat on Solaris. Unfortunately, FedEx isn't here yet...

Marshall · Mar 23, 2001, 10:54 PM

I haven't gotten my OS X package yet, so I can't check this out...I'm wondering if you can change orientation/pinning via AppleScript. The Dock was somewhat scriptable in PB; they may have added functionality for this since then. If this can be done through scripting, the changes should take effect immediately.

Just a thought, in case anyone wants to look into it.

KyLeW · Mar 24, 2001, 03:23 AM

An applescript in the start up folder should do it, or am I thinking too OS 9-ish?

rtamesis · Mar 24, 2001, 05:42 AM

You mean the Log In control panel now. Apps or docs dragged into its window will result in those apps launched at startup.

Eugene · Mar 24, 2001, 05:42 AM

I have always been for the option of having the dock being customizable in position. I knew I would never be satisified unless I tried it. I did. It doesn't work well for me, but that's personal opinion. I thought I'd love it, since that's how my WindowMaker dock is in UNIX. I didn't take into account the proportions of my monitor. My monitor is running at 1280x1024, so moving the mouse down is easier than moving it left or right. There's less real estate to scrub past.

It also stays in peripheral vision, which is meddlesome. I don't hide my dock because I want to be able to reference its contents all the time.

I have my dock in the right-bottom corner, kind of small so that it takes up less than half of the screen horizontally. It works well. The only possible problem is having the resize widget get caught underneath, but that almost never happens.

With a dock on the right, it blocks icons that are placed on your desktop by the OS. <-- This should also be an option...you should be able to choose which side the OS places your icons, instead of automatically having them put on the rightmost, topmost space.

On the left, new windows have their wigdgets blocked a lot.

intastella · Mar 24, 2001, 06:31 AM

The reason its not an option right now is that it's not done. Orienting the Dock anywhere but the bottom reveals that the menus off of Dock items don't have an arrow pointing to them, they just sorta float. And the top, left, right orientation doesn't have a Dock "bounds" yet, so app windows can't stretch past the Dock. Now if you look in the contents of the Dock.preference, you'll find that there is a DockPrefExt.nib file that adds orientation and pinning in the Dock Preferences. Thing is, it doesn't work yet. The fact that it is there is pretty good proof that it WILL be an option, later.

intastella · Mar 24, 2001, 06:39 AM

Damn Double post!

[This message has been edited by intastella (edited 03-24-2001).]

the siren · Mar 24, 2001, 09:13 PM

For those of you worriy ing about the dock covering teh icon on the right side of the screen, just set the dock to the size you want, then View > CleanUp, and the icons will shift over to make room for the dock. try putting it really small and really big. you might have to use Arrange by Name to get it to go smaller, i did.

I'm just about to log out after locking the com.apple.dock.plist in users> user > library > preferences. im hoping that the dock will stay how i want it to.

the siren · Mar 24, 2001, 10:03 PM

Didn't work, im going to try to see what changes there are in teh users prefs if i leave the dock in default postition. I check out the defaults in the dock package contents, and there are no lines that specify where it is pinned of oriented, that could just easliy be changed.

the siren · Mar 24, 2001, 10:19 PM

no luck, im gonna keep trying differnt stuff. i'll stay posted.

holiday · Mar 25, 2001, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by rtamesis:
This is from the General Discussion forum posted by stinkyjoe:

1. Boot OS 9.1 (or 9.0.4 if you have it on a separate partition).

2. Select the Dock.app (in System/Library/Core Services) while holding down the control key to reveal a contextual menu. Select View Package contents. If you are booted into OS 9.0.4, you can just open the Dock.app folder.

3. Copy the file Dock.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/DockMenus.plist onto your 9 hard disk and make a backup copy. Then open the original (on your 9 drive) with a texteditor (e.g. BBEdit Lite).

4. Find the text 1013. Replace the text "<key>command</key>" that appears ABOVE the text "1013", with"<key>menu</key>"

5. Do the same with the text above"1014".

6. Save the file as text.

7. Now replace the original plist.

8. Reboot into X and click near the separator until the menu comes up. There you go...much nicer.

Thank you Thank you Thank you.
I don't know why but, everything I tried in the terminal just didn't work

bojangles · Mar 29, 2001, 05:20 AM

I set Pin to "End", but the Trash still goes off the screen when I roll over something else. Is this normal?

Mar 29, 2001, 12:34 PM

Bojangles said: I set Pin to "End", but the Trash still goes off the screen when I roll over something else. Is this normal?

Yes, but only if Dock Magnification is ON. I had the same problem, then turned the magnification off in the system preferences. Poof, no more problems with runaway trashcans! I also turned the damn animations off...I suddenly feel more peaceful

Man...I am glad that I finally have a right sided dock...I've been wanting one of these since I first played with a NeXTcube all those years ago!

mrchin · Mar 29, 2001, 12:53 PM

Yeah, the vertical dock is cool. But I'm kinda used to it at the bottom. I had it vertically for about five minutes last night. Maybe I outta try it at end right. I like a little magnification and anim� is nice. What's this "suck" minimize thing someone mentioned?