I've just moved from Windows to Mac. Windows paths look different than Mac. So Kontakt Libraries (loaded via the browser, not licensed via Native Access), custom HALion presets, track presets in Cubase are all looking for a Windows path like "S:/Samples/[library]/samples..." while the location on Mac would be "Samples/[library]/samples...".
I knew this would be a problem going into it. But it is a huge task to load up each presets and resave to the new path.
Is there a solution to this or a trick anyone used when transition between operating systems? I have so many libraries in use this way and track presets saved in cubase looking for a particular path.
Thanks in advance!
Mac Read Windows Path
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- KVRian
- 1349 posts since 26 Aug, 2019
I'm afraid you may not find a solution other than manually changing them. It is a fundamental system difference between the OSes. You also face the real potential that the \ and / are reversed between Win and Mac for file paths.
If you could find the files where such presets are stored, and they are stored in plaintext, you could run a script to automate conversion by reading in the file and converting old path to new path and writing back to the file. That type of task is very well known and possible. On unix (macos) a tool like awk or sed is indispensable for such things, but also could be done in perl or python and examples abound for any of these. But how much time do you want to spend on this?
Why do you have to convert everything all at once? It would become a sequence of much smaller tasks if you were to convert them on an as-needed basis as you require the old presets.
If you could find the files where such presets are stored, and they are stored in plaintext, you could run a script to automate conversion by reading in the file and converting old path to new path and writing back to the file. That type of task is very well known and possible. On unix (macos) a tool like awk or sed is indispensable for such things, but also could be done in perl or python and examples abound for any of these. But how much time do you want to spend on this?
Why do you have to convert everything all at once? It would become a sequence of much smaller tasks if you were to convert them on an as-needed basis as you require the old presets.
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- Suspended
- 16031 posts since 14 Jun, 2001 from Somewhere else, on principle
This doesn't sound right, Macs "just work", don't they? Perhaps the unicorns and rainbows are obscuring the paths?
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- KVRAF
- 1954 posts since 8 Jan, 2005
It truly is the only OS using backslashes. No one else does it that way
MacMini M2 Pro . 32GB . 2TB . . Bitwig Studio 5.2……Renoise……Reason 12……Live 12 Push 2
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- KVRAF
- 35569 posts since 11 Apr, 2010 from Germany
It has (obviously) technical reasons: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archi ... -character
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- KVRAF
- 1954 posts since 8 Jan, 2005
Nice to know... still, though, nonetheless, andsoforth,....wrong by *ANY* other OSchk071 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:18 pm It has (obviously) technical reasons: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archi ... -character
MacMini M2 Pro . 32GB . 2TB . . Bitwig Studio 5.2……Renoise……Reason 12……Live 12 Push 2
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- KVRAF
- 15339 posts since 8 Mar, 2005 from Utrecht, Holland
Not relevant. DOS / Windows is not any of those other OSses. So sure enough specifying a file path with one convention does not work on the other. Has anyone ever suggested it should?
The core problem though is not backslash or forward slash. At the windows api level these can both be used. It's the drive letter and colon which gets in the way and breaks compatibility.
The core problem though is not backslash or forward slash. At the windows api level these can both be used. It's the drive letter and colon which gets in the way and breaks compatibility.
We are the KVR collective. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. 
My MusicCalc is served over https!!
My MusicCalc is served over https!!
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- KVRian
- 1349 posts since 26 Aug, 2019
Yes, that's the fundamental problem. I would imagine something like Cygwin long ago found a work around to map drive letters A: - Z: to /dev/x when using their tools. I doubt Kontakt is going to be able to use third-party work arounds though, so unless those paths are stored in a text file and you can programmatically do a search and replace for a regular expression of e.g. S:\Samples\some\directory to /Volumes/Samples/some/other/directory, I don't see any solution that doesn't involve manually changing the stored path presets.
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- KVRian
- 1023 posts since 3 Oct, 2011 from Christchurch, New Zealand
correct - and also if you use DOS device paths to get similar behaviour to the /Volumes directory on MacOS : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotne ... th-formats
unfortunately most programs still use traditional DOS paths instead
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- KVRist
- 185 posts since 3 Jan, 2021
Also, the colon is a normal character in Unix pathnames. "S:" is a valid directory name in Unix.
So sometimes you can make a hardcoded path "s:/foo/bar" work by `mkdir -p s:/foo/bar` in the working directory and then symlinking something inside bar.
So sometimes you can make a hardcoded path "s:/foo/bar" work by `mkdir -p s:/foo/bar` in the working directory and then symlinking something inside bar.
