number of characters that fit without showing (....)

[Wie Gehts]

Howdy.

This had been making me kookoo. It seems that sometimes I can name a file or a folder with many words/characters and it'll show up entirely underneath and sometimes I'll use less but it'll abbreviate by using periods.

For example, it may show as: My dog is a very nice dog

or it may show as: My dog is....ce dog

Anyone know why?

Thanks

 

[GGJstudios]

It uses the ellipsis when it can't fit the entire filename in the column.

 

[Wie Gehts]

Sorry, I don't get ya.

As icons, list or columns, I don't see any (). Besides, this is not what I'm talking about.

 

[GGJstudios]

If you can post a screen shot of what you're referring to, it would help.

 

[notjustjay]

Sorry, I don't get ya.

As icons, list or columns, I don't see any (). Besides, this is not what I'm talking about.

The ellipsis is the technical name for the set of dots "..." that you referred to.

Unrelated but funny story: A friend of mine set her Facebook status to something like "Jane is rebooting her brain after a long and stressful day." Thanks to the wonders of cropping, everyone saw her in the Facebook chat window as "Jane is rebooting her bra..."

 

[Wie Gehts]

I thought parenthesis in lieu of ellipses. I think I'm part time dyslexic!

My bad... sorry

So why the "..." sometimes and fully written out other times?

Oh, and in icon view, not list or columns.

 

[GGJstudios]

I thought parenthesis in lieu of ellipses. I think I'm part time dyslexic!

My bad... sorry

So why the "..." sometimes and fully written out other times?

As I explained, it's used when there's not enough room to fit the whole name, such as when a column in Finder is too small. Resize a Finder column and you'll see it happen as you move the size.

 

[Menge]

You can make Finder show more characters when in icon view by decreasing the font size or increasing the grid spacing (Leopard only).

To do this, press Cmd+J and change the text size to something like 11pt or increase the grid size. I have my fonts set to 11pt and it fits quite a lot of text before getting ellipsis.

Another alternative is to enable the Path Bar (View > Show Path Bar)in Finder so that when you click a file the Path Bar shows the whole filename (in most cases).

 

[Wie Gehts]

I'm on Tiger, thanks

ggjstudios, I appreciate it but I'm I'm only talking about icon view.

As I say, you got a folder, for ex, sitting on your desktop. Sometimes I can have it named with many words, and they all show. Sometimes, with less wording, they won't all show. The folder name gets abbreviated with ellipses.