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From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: More on "improving" Finder
Message-ID: <991@unc.cs.unc.edu>
Date: Sat, 15-Aug-87 21:27:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.991
Posted: Sat Aug 15 21:27:55 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Aug-87 12:05:27 EDT
References: <3220@zen.berkeley.edu> <20021@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <223@dbase.UUCP>
Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele)
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 41

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.

drc@dbase.UUCP (Dennis Cohen) writes:
>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.

Putting an extra entry in the 'APPL' resource in the "Desktop" file does
this.  For instance, to set up a disk that you expect to have text files
with a MacWrite creator (like those created by Smalltalk and many terminal
programs and) that you want to edit with MDSEdit instead of MacWrite, find
an entry for <'EDIT',"MDS Edit",n> and add one for <'MACA',"MDS Edit",n>.
My other major use for this is getting Unpit to open both applications
created by itself and those created by whatever the commercial pitter is.

} 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.

Unfortunately, hacking the APPL doesn't do either of these, since the
Finder looks at a document's creator instead of its type.  One problem is
the ambiguity:  do you want Lightspeed C or one of the text editors to be
invoked upon text-only files created by Lightspeed C?

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Oliver Steele				  ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele
							steele%unc@mcnc.org

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