Workflow vs. Script

You are missing the "Save As Plug-in..." in Automator's File menu. 🙂

With that, you can save as a "Folder Actions" plug-in and attach it to the folder in one step.

Automator will automatically create an appropriate AppleScript script that will reference the saved workflow, attach that script to the folder, and save the workflow in the default folder for Automator Folder Actions in your Library/Workflows folder. Just use Spotlight to find it again if you forget, or Automator's "Open Recent" menu.

As you probably already know, in the Finder you can also right-click on a folder that has a script attached to it and use the "More" menu at the bottom to open the script instead. While the script Automator creates isn't anything special, it does have the path to the Automator workflow inside it.

There are other plug-in types, too, so Automator isn't quite as limited as you first wrote. 😉

Spotlight doesn't search certain places like the Library folders, but you can search those from the Finder if needed. Leopard uses Access Control Lists on several system folders, so you need to be careful with using the "Get Info" window, and things like "apply to enclosed items". Both of these technologies do what they are supposed to do - the problem is understanding what that is, which Apple really missed the boat at documenting.

Thanks for mentioning that about Spotlight. I know Spotlight used to find the workflows in Library, perhaps before 10.5.2, as I tried it out before recommending it long ago. I'm sure it helps to leave out all of those files in the Library, so it makes sense it's not indexed anymore. Oh well, I guess I won't suggest that anymore. 🙂

Spotlight will search where the user has permissions, although the System folders aren't searched by default (you can specify system items in a Finder search). The Access Control Lists are a bit of a surprise to most users, so there may be search restrictions relating to those. Leopard's Spotlight search has also been tweaked a bit to keep confusing items such as cache files out of the default search results, but you would have to do some investigation for specifics since the documentation is a bit sparse.

I didn't see a Leopard update, but Tiger's Spotlight search locations are documented here.

Hmm, I've got Leopard and I've categories in the Spotlight menu, if that's what you mean. No problems there. And I've got categories in the System Preferences for Spotlight, no problems there either. Likely it's your computer and your circumstances if you don't have those.

On the other hand, I do believe the system did change a little, since there's no longer several different types of search windows. IIRC in 10.4, choosing to show all results from the Spotlight menu would give a window that resembled an RSS page in Safari. However, there were also other types of windows for searching and creating Smart Folders available from the Finder. I believe they dropped all the different types for the sake of consistency and much less confusion. Now there's just one type of search window (and it doubles as a normal Finder window) regardless of whether search is initiated from from the Spotlight menu, the Finder with Cmd-F or Cmd-Shift-F, or from within a Finder window. It's also the same window for creating a Smart Folder.

You can still organize the listing by category with the Kind column, and focus on just one kind by adding a search criteria if there isn't already one. By default, the first criteria is automatically set to Kind and has "Any" chosen to show everything. Just change the type to instantly switch back and forth between different document categories such as Images, Documents, Movies, PDFs, and so on.

The only other interesting thing about the old RSS style results was being able to organize by time. That's just another search criteria that can easily be adjusted. It's also been addressed by default saved searches (aka Smart Folders) in the "Search" category in the Finder's sidebar, via Finder's preferences. So, any search from the Spotlight menu or Finder can be adjusted for kind (category), time, or practically anything else (other) and saved for easy access from the Finder.

It is a little different from Tiger, but I find it's also a lot more flexible and less confusing to use this way. Also, the consistency keeps Spotlight from appearing as a separate entity that needs special training. Instead, it's just another name for searching in whatever app there's a search field, that happens to transparently enable the possibility of smart folders or saved searches (same thing really, different only by thought).

If the lack of various search windows isn't something you feel are missing, then as I suggested before it's likely your own circumstances and computer. You've probably made some changes I haven't made, and that others also without your problem haven't made. After fiddling as much as you seem to have done trying to get things to act the way it's expected without starting from scratch, it's probably time to give in and start from scratch.

Have you tried a fresh install and testing it out before making any changes from the standard install? By doing that and slowly making the changes a little at a time, you can troubleshoot what changes you are making that is causing the issue.

It sounds like you have a few different things not going as expected. Try to not ball them all up into one problem too quickly. Hopefully, some of it was just a matter of perception or expectations based on how search windows appeared in 10.4 compared to 10.5 instead. Sounds like there are other issues, but it seems like too many different issues are being combined and making an unwieldy problem. It can get excessively challenging to troubleshoot when overly frustrated by such a Frankensteinian monster of a problem. 😉

Good luck in breaking it down. 🙂

The "ACL found but not expected" message means just that - Apple says you can ignore the message, but my guess is that an "Apply (permissions) to enclosed items" was used from the Get Info window. Most of the system folders have a "deny delete" ACL item that isn't readily seen in the Get Info, so if the permissions are applied to the enclosed items then they will wind up with an ACL that wasn't expected (I think everyone got surprised by this one). This may also be a problem with copying to the backup volume (if you are using the same name and replacing it, for example). If you are comfortable with using the Terminal, the chmod command can be used to remove or modify the ACL entries, although repairing permissions should restore things (on the system disk) to what the receipts/bom say they should be. Using the Get Info window to change permissions can be an issue, since there are a few new things that can trip up an unsuspecting user.

As for spotlight not showing the categories, those are selected in the Spotlight preferences, so if they are enabled but still not showing up, you might try removing the preference .plist to get it reset. A corrupt Spotlight database can still cause problems, so rebuilding it is an option - EasyFind works a little bit differently (and slower), since it doesn't build a database.

I run both Leopard and Tiger, but am still figuring out the differences, which appear to be tricky in a few places.

The Terminal commands will definitely "take", since they are what ultimately gets used by the system. The permissions are doing what they are supposed to, it is just that ACL's in Tiger were turned off by default, so there was some confusion when Leopard's were turned on (and used) without any documentation to that fact. Modifying (or removing) the ACL for your backup file should take care of any issues with deleting it.

You can use the mdutil utility to erase the database store(s), and ls (for example, ls -ldeh 'some/file/path') will show what the permissions really are, since Get Info comes up a bit short.