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From: drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: More on "improving" Finder
Message-ID: <223@dbase.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Aug-87 09:06:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: dbase.223
Posted: Thu Aug 13 09:06:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Aug-87 12:00:57 EDT
References: <3220@zen.berkeley.edu> <20021@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Ashton Tate Development Center Glendale Cal.
Lines: 35
Summary: Alias launcher

In article <20021@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, korn@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) writes:
> 
> 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.

There is another kludge available, one that I have been using since I wrote it
for another party who asked this question.  It is a very short piece of code
(I wrote it in MDS assembler and TML) which is very special purpose.  It
involves taking the FREF, BNDL, and ICN# resources from the missing application,
and Rezing them into an application which consists merely of a launch command
to the one you really want.  This passes along the Finder information from the
original launch.  I have one so that if I double-click a Write document on my
II or Prodigy, it launches MindWrite; others that launch SuperPaint if I launch
a MacPaint or FullPaint file.

Reply to me, if enough people want, I will upload the source for one of them
to this forum (it's fairly short).

Dennis Cohen
Ashton-Tate Glendale Development Center
dBASE Mac Development Team