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From: johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Kudos for Understudy ...
Message-ID: <54655@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 25 May 91 03:25:44 GMT
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Applause all around for ftp.apple.com, System 7 by ftp, and now even
ResEdit and MacsBug have been made available thanks to Mark Johnson
and all those who lobbied the bureaucrats when the easiest path would
have been to avoid getting involved.  But getting to the subject:

Larry Rosenstein's "Understudy" is particularly neat.  It extends the
nifty "couldn't find application ... open it with TeachText" behavior
of the Finder by letting you pick an alternate application to launch
any Mac file type.  

This can't be done arbitrarily -- MacPaint can't open a Word document,
for example.  My 'guess' is that applications which support opening
files created by other applications will respond favorably to this
re-mapping, but it will probably take some poking around to find
workable combinations and identify limitations.

I won't waste bandwidth by describing how to configure Understudy
with ResEdit (that's covered in the Understudy documentation), but
just to give an example:  to let StuffIt 1.5.1 files be opened by
by Compact Pro, all you have to do is insert a new field into the 
"substitute apps" resource and enter "SIT!" in the Type box and
"CPCT" in the creator box.

The nice thing about the way this works is that the switch only 
occurs when the Finder doesn't locate the parent application
on a mounted volume.  

Anyone else have ideas for useful "Understudy" applications?

-- Bill (johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu)

(Understudy is available as /info-mac/init/understudy-10d3.hqx
on sumex-aim.stanford.edu.  You'll need ResEdit to configure it.)