How to force files.app to treat renamed folder as a folder?

[sracer]

Greetings all.
I've been tinkering with iDOS 3 on my iPad 10th gen and so far I'm quite pleased with the results.

But I've run into the following:
In the Files.app, I have a folder "DOSBoxW311" in the root of "On my iPad". To get iDOS to recognize it, I had to rename it to "DOSBoxW311.idos". The icon for the folder changed and when tapping on the icon, iDOS launches using that folder.

If I want to add a file to that folder, I can't simply open it in the Files.app because the file extension, .idos is associated with iDOS.

If I rename the folder back to "DOSBoxW311" (no extension), the name changes, the background color of the name is blue, but it is no longer recognized as a folder.

Is there any way to tell Files.app that the folder is actually a folder?

thanks!


(Getting Windows 3.11 and Geoworks Ensemble running on the iPad with full sound, keyboard, and mouse support is fantastic!)

 

[BigBlur]

There doesn't seem to be a way, but how comfortable are you tinkering with Shortcuts? You could possibly work around the issue by using those. I was able to create a shortcut to save a file in a "non-traditional" or "broken" folder...or whatever you want to call it.

Have a "Select File" action to browse and select a file, then a "Save File" action to save it to "On My iPad", with the subpath being "/DOSBoxW311.idos". In my testing, it would save the file inside "DOSBoxW311.idos". You could probably integrate this with the Share Sheet so that you can save them right from the file themselves.

I also found that some shortcut actions would work if I built them while the actual/working folder existed first. For example, I created the "DOSBoxW311" folder and then created a shortcut to the "Get Contents of Folder" action with that folder selected. The shortcut still worked after I renamed the folder to "DOSBoxW311.idos". (I did not need to update my shortcut.)

Note: I don't use iDOS, nor am I familiar with it. I put ".idos" in the examples above to make it easier to read for you, but I was actually using the ".app" extension myself so that I could replicate the issue.

One last idea... Have a "DOSBoxW311" folder that always remains as a folder. When you need the .idos file, duplicate the folder and rename the copy to "DOSBoxW311.idos". If iDOS saves things to things to "DOSBoxW311.idos", then I guess this isn't really an option since you would lose that info when you make a new .idos file from your folder. You would probably need to look into creating a shortcut that can copy the contents of the .idos file back into an actual/working folder.

 

[sracer]

Thank you for your comprehensive response. It confirms what I was experiencing and you've offered some excellent workarounds.

I think what this experience tells me is to cut my losses in getting something like iDOS to run on the iPad. Renaming a file/folder is a rudimentary function of an operating system's filesystem. If iPadOS/iOS can't even do that properly, then I fully expect that I'll encounter a showstopping "gotcha" (not much) later on.

thanks again!

 

[Wando64]

Thank you for your comprehensive response. It confirms what I was experiencing and you've offered some excellent workarounds.

I think what this experience tells me is to cut my losses in getting something like iDOS to run on the iPad. Renaming a file/folder is a rudimentary function of an operating system's filesystem. If iPadOS/iOS can't even do that properly, then I fully expect that I'll encounter a showstopping "gotcha" (not much) later on.

thanks again!

I’ve tried to rename folders in every which way (including giving them the .idos extension), and then renaming them back to their original name, etc…, without experiencing any of your problems.
The one thing I have to done is installing iDOS, which makes me think; are you sure that your problems are not caused by iDOS rather than the renaming from Files?