DesktopPreferences

One of the SystemPreferences items.

Q. Is it possible to have other folders appear in the "collections" drop-down list?

A. The ~/Pictures and the last user-chosen folder appear by default in the "collections" list. The system-supplied folders are registered in /System/Library/PreferencePanes/DesktopPictures.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Collections.plist.

The names to display in the drop-down are set in /System/Library/PreferencePanes/DesktopPictures.prefPane/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Collections.strings

note: to easily open these files, use the Open command in the TerminalApp & copy-paste the full filenames from above

editing them works, but saving is proving somewhat problematic... TextEdit won't save them

With very good reasons, these are System owned files and protected from JoeLuser. Enter TerminalApp, cd there and run ls -la. -- You have to be RootUser to shoot in your foot!

Thought of that -- I sudo chowned it to me, but still no joy. The ShowInfo box (or is InfoBox a better page name?) shows me as owner and "wheel" as group, ls-l shows me as owner too. (thanks for your patient help with this particular JoeLuser, BTW. I'll refactor this dialog wiki-style once I finally get it -- Tarquin from Wikipedia)

TextEdit wants to unlink and relink the file during save, so it can just swap the file below the directory entry in one step. It needs write permission on the directory to do so. This might break hard links to the file - the other files will link to the old version - but hard links are discouraged for normal files anyway. Expect such behavior from all GUI editors. To modify system files, UnixHeads like editors running in terminal better (vi, emacs). Apple also includes pico, which is a simple and suitable editor to edit system files. -- PeterVohmann. Thanks for the patting, Tarquin!

I solved this problem by taking a deep breath & creating a RootUser account, where TextEdit works fine. -- Tarquin (I used Unix years ago, but I'm definitely a MacHead when it comes to the interface. Mac OS X is a bit like two opposite worlds colliding... :-)

PrefEdit - http://www.bresink.de/osx/PrefEdit.html <- interesting, but not useful in this context

1 importing the Mac OS 9 desktop pics

If you have a dual-boot Mac with OS 9, you might want to access the grooby desktop images that are available in OS 9. The text to add these folders to the OS X panel is as follows:

In Collections.plist --

and in Collections.strings --

/* OS 9 folders */ OS9_3Dgraphics = "OS 9 3D graphics"; OS9_Convergency = "OS 9 Convergency"; OS9_EnsemblePictures = "OS 9 Ensemble Picture"; OS9_Photos = "OS 9 Photos";

2 Desktop pictures