file and abstraction management: folder structure

command-S should definetly save the new version into the old file, and not somewhere else. this sounds very strange and not max releated - any third party utility in your system which could cause that?

Save as... will indeed take you to the last used folder but Save should overwrite the original file. What's probably meant is saving a new patch. That being said, I don't like the Save as... behavior either.

Ok I did my homework a bit better - thank you both for the prompts. It is indeed Save As - what I tend to do is have filenames end in a version number Eg DatprocessingV2-0-3.maxpat

I work on the patch, click Save As, update the version number and forget to look at the path that is displayed (because I have 10 other ideas in my head I want to turn into a patch)

Then indeed it saves it to whatever the last folder was I saved something into.

So rephrasing my question: can the default path of a 'Save As..' be changed to be the path the current patcher is in, rather than whichever folder I last saved to?

The problem is actually that I have built quite a big library of patches and abstractions, so the path I am looking for is often quite a few clicks away

no, not even with third party extensions to the OS.

"save as" means by definition "save as something else than what it has been before" and this not yet existent file simply does not have a path.

the only thing you can do is to use lesser folders. i know that it can be cool to save new versions and keep all the prior ones, but then you must live with that extra bit of work, either renaming or in the form of sorting into the right place.

let my try a little paradox intervention: it is great that you have so many subfolders for your patches, that you have lost overview where a file has to go, isnt it?

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Hmm well the patch knows very well where it is and what it's path is, so it seems feasible to me that the 'save as...' options starts with the path the patch was previously saved in. I guess I could even create an abstraction that reads the current path, and saves the patch in the same path but just ups the version number +1

Your paradox intervention (new concept to me) had me confused for a while... but in fact I know exactly where my patches are :-) the amount of folders is just about right, I'd just like to have a a way that for the next version of the same patch, for each patch, I don't have to browse to the folder from the same starting point.

you said the patch would know where its subpatchers are located. that does not help us, because the patch has nothing to do with the save dialog of the OS.
i think even if they would meet in real life they had a communication problem, because the OS speaks mandarin and the max patch only speaks spanish.

your best bet is that there is eventually an extension to the OS available hich automatically creates copies of files overwritten, so that you could just "save" a file, and the OS makes sure that the original is copied and renamed before it is going to be overwritten.

it might also be that i am overlooking an obvious solution from inside the max patch, for example using java or javascript.

"The problem is actually that I have built quite a big library of patches and abstractions, so the path I am looking for is often quite a few clicks away"

you might laugh about this solution, but when i am in this situation i open my abstractions folder and the main folder of the current max project, plus i use the "default folder" extension for mac OS since 20 years, which makes navigation a bit easier. when yu are talking about clicks i fell i want to add thaht i mostly use the cursor keys to navigate in file browsers such as the OS´s, it seems faster.

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Isn't it just a matter of changing the save dialog's default behavior in code? I assume the Max devs can choose what is the behavior, point to the last used folder or the original location of a patch.

I don't get it, and I wonder if we're talking about the same thing. If I click 'Save As' the suggested name for the patch is the current name.

If the 'Save As' dialogue knows the current filename why can't it know the current file path?

As a very off topic aside:

I have not managed to navigate dialog boxes in Max OSX, I'll google it and see if I can get the hang of it. I switched to Mac 3 years ago, but in fact I still miss the dialog boxes on windows, which allow you to show the full tree hierarchy, expand and collapse branches, open explore windows in specific folders and even move and rename files within the 'save' and 'open' dialog. It may sound out of place - but it's often when you save or open a file that you realise you need to do some moving/renaming.

that is simply the logic behind "save" and "save as". "save" means into the same file, "safe as" means into a new file. because this includes the path, it is not default behavior that an application tells the finder to go to where the original was. and as soon as you save a modified file into a new one, the previous open document is now the new one.

you must not forget that this is not the normal case, that you have different subfolders for a bunch of files with unique names. this almost only happens in programming languages which _require unique names in the file path.
maxmsp is an absolute exception here, at least when the user isnt making the mistake using double names. :)

for photoshop documents it can happen that there is a "sweet.jpg" in /cats as well as in /dogs. in a html project it is quite common to have dozens of "index.html", one in each folder. to which one would you like the dialog to jump when you are about to save one of them?

maxmsp could theoretically also track and store the paths of each file it opened, but it does not, because it is simply not needed in a system which does not allow double file names. looking from the patcher level, max only know the names of the externals and patches called from the root patcher, but not their path.

about navigating: most apps allow 2 modes in their open and save dialogs, compact and extended. you´d trigger the extended mode by clicking into the arrow in the path menu in case its not activated.

and you really should try stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX and see if you like that better.