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From: korn@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: More on "improving" Finder
Message-ID: <20021@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 8-Aug-87 01:16:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.20021
Posted: Sat Aug  8 01:16:55 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Aug-87 08:48:52 EDT
References: <3220@zen.berkeley.edu>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: korn@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Distribution: world
Organization: What, me organized???
Lines: 34

In <3220@zen.berkeley.edu>, schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU said:  
>I too, find it very incovenient having to have MacWrite or MacPaint everytime
>I just want to look at the dump of a file.  The problem gets worse when the
>file is just a plain text file, e.g. a note from one of the public domain
>programs....

I have this problem also.  I find that I often want to read one of the
tech notes, or some documentation, or whatever, and being that I have a
MacII, and I don't even have a copy of MacWrite 4.6....  well, you get the
idea.

Ideally what I would want to happen is this:  I double-click on document foo,
and automagically MS-Word (substitute your favorite word processor here)
gets invoked, and opens (converting if necessary) the document.

Now, the way finder info is set up, this won't happen.  But I wonder, just
what would be involved to make this little bit of magic work?  As I see it,
there are two levels of kludge necessary.  On the one level, if foo is a
text file, then all the finder has to do is look for something that can
eat a text file (such as my word processor).  On the second level, the finder
would have to scan for a list of acceptable owners (MacWrite, TeachText,
Edit, everyone else's source editor, etc.), and invoke the designated word
processor/editor.

Apple, or anyone:  could this or something like it be done?  There is no need,
as far as I'm concerned, to have a 'viewer' built into the finder.  In fact,
oftentimes, I won't want to just view it, but also edit it.


Peter "just a little wishful thinking" Korn
--
Peter "Arrgh" Korn
korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
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