Bookmark Resolver

Open new  Bookmark Resolver  windows using the  Open Resolver  command in the  Window  menu.

Paste a Base-64-encoded Bookmark into the upper text view of the Bookmark Resolver, then click on the  Analyse  button or press Return to see its contents in the lowest text view. To resolve the Bookmark as well, click on the  Resolve  button instead. If Precize can resolve the Bookmark data, the middle text box will then display its  regular  and  volfs paths , which you can copy to Terminal or elsewhere. To locate that item after it has been resolved, click on the  Reveal in Finder  button after resolving the Bookmark, and to preview the document using QuickLook, click on the  Preview  button.

Bookmarks which are saved in .sfl and .sfl2 files in ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist pad the Base-64 data with superfluous spaces, newlines, and tabs. Precize tries to strip those characters from the text pasted in before trying to use it as a Bookmark. It replaces the text that you pasted into the box with the cleaned-up text, so that you can save that as a more concise Bookmark if you wish.

To analyse a Finder Alias file rather than a pasted-in Bookmark, click on the  Open file as Base-64  button, select the Alias you want to study and click  Open . The contents of the Alias will be converted into Base-64 form and displayed in the top text view, and its contents will be shown in the lowest text view. You don’t need to click on the  Analyse  button to see this for Aliases. Click on the  Resolve  button for that Alias to be resolved if possible, and made available for  Preview  and to  Reveal in Finder .

When you  Analyse  or  Resolve  a Bookmark or Alias, the lowest text view displays the entire contents of that Bookmark in two formats: first as structured information, and second as the data broken down into its components. These contain a great deal of information beyond the path and volfs paths shown above, and are invaluable for exploring Bookmarks fully. Even when a Bookmark cannot now be resolved (for example, if the path no longer exists and volfs path cannot be found either), this enables you to extract information about the Bookmark when it was created. Change the size of the text used in this view between 4 and 24 points, with the  + keys to enlarge it, and the  – keys to reduce it.

When resolving an Alias, if the  Refresh data  box is  ticked,  the action of resolving it will update the data in the Alias. If that box is  not ticked  (default), then the action of resolving it will not update data in the Alias. This allows you to preserve its contents even when the item an Alias points to has moved. It doesn’t of course change any original Bookmark data already saved in a file.

The  Reveal in Finder  button runs an AppleScript to do its work. If you have disabled AppleScript for any reason, that is not likely to work.

The  Preview  button has one unexpected side-effect: because of a bug (I think in QuickLook support libraries), it also selects all the text in the lower text window. This is a workaround which I had to introduce, or QuickLook proved unable to find the document.

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