Re: Opening file with application
Methinks we shouldn't be going down this path, really. Apple has a defined way to get to this stuff: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2017.html ...which is probably exactly what the 'open' command uses to figure out which application to launch. Oh, darn. No excuse to write arcane code today. :) Methinks youthinks right. Thanks for the link. -- Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opening file with application
On 9/8/02 9:51 PM, Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded: On 9/8/02 8:01 PM, Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Obvious thought, but have you tried plist? It doesn't seem to be that -- I tried both pl and plutil, and neither wanted to read it. But I have no experience with plists, so maybe I'm not running these correctly... Hmm -- http://www.macaddict.com/osx/hacks/pledit.html talks about PropertyListEditor or something like that. (picked up by searching with google for plist.) They don't let me use my iBook at work, so I can't check what it was I used last, but I keep trying to convince myself that some editor allowed me to load and save compressed plist files. I'm probably confused, though, seems like I spend most of my time confused. Ah, yes -- PropertyListEditor does exist (in the Developer Tools), but crashes when trying to load that cache file. :( Methinks we shouldn't be going down this path, really. Apple has a defined way to get to this stuff: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2017.html which is probably exactly what the 'open' command uses to figure out which application to launch. -- John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.johnlabovitz.com
Re: Opening file with application
Not that I have an answer...but I have a similar problem. I can launch MS Excel and have it open a OTF generated file from Win32. But Mac OS X does not do itmaybe I should read the docs, but...if I backtick an `open /dir/to/msexcel` Excel opens, but the redirect, or `open /dir/to/msexcel $file`` does not work. That is to say, MS Excel (Classic) still opens from within Perl on Mac OS X, but I cannot get it to open the file itself...which is a pain in the butt. I figured if I got Mac OS X version MS Office things might get rectified, but I have yet to get an upgrade. I put my vote in for any ideas on a non-OS specific solution to opening an application and having said application open a file to boot. ;) Cheers, Ward On 2002.09.08, at 11:06, John Delacour wrote: At 8:48 am -0700 8/9/02, Enrique Terrazas wrote: How about using SetFile (installed by the developer tools) to set the creator and file type to excel, and then using the open command? Well a) I don't want to change the file creator and b) only a small minority of users will have Setfile installed. JD
Re: Opening file with application
On 9/8/02 2:20 PM, Ward W. Vuillemot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: maybe I should read the docs, but...if I backtick an `open /dir/to/msexcel` Excel opens, but the redirect, or `open /dir/to/msexcel $file`` does not work. Do you really need to use redirection? If you're trying to just launch Excel with a certain file, use the -a flag: open -a /dir/to/msexcel $file I just did some testing, and it looks like you don't even have to supply the path to Excel. Here's exactly what I typed: open -a Microsoft Excel /tmp/t.txt If you really want to use redirection, I think you're out of luck. Either Excel would have to know the concept of standard input (not likely, especially given that it's a Classic app), or the open command will need to save the input away in a temporary file, then pass that temporary filename to Excel (then delete the file -- unless the app wants to save it!). -- John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.johnlabovitz.com
Re: Opening file with application
The docs - for open(1) in particular - might suggest something along the lines of: `open -a Microsoft Excel $foo` (or whatever the Excel executable happens to be called on the target system) But some versions of Excel (mine is ancient - YMMV with something newer than v.4) might refuse to open files with an unfamiliar type. -Charles [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 2:20 PM -0700 9/8/2002, Ward W. Vuillemot wrote: Not that I have an answer...but I have a similar problem. I can launch MS Excel and have it open a OTF generated file from Win32. But Mac OS X does not do itmaybe I should read the docs, but...if I backtick an `open /dir/to/msexcel` Excel opens, but the redirect, or `open /dir/to/msexcel $file`` does not work. That is to say, MS Excel (Classic) still opens from within Perl on Mac OS X, but I cannot get it to open the file itself...which is a pain in the butt. I figured if I got Mac OS X version MS Office things might get rectified, but I have yet to get an upgrade.
Re: Opening file with application
On Sunday, September 8, 2002, at 05:58 PM, John Delacour wrote: At 4:33 pm -0600 8/9/02, Charles Albrecht wrote: `open -a Microsoft Excel $foo` (or whatever the Excel executable happens to be called on the target system) But some versions of Excel (mine is ancient - YMMV with something newer than v.4) might refuse to open files with an unfamiliar type. Aha! That's the sort of thing I needed, and it does work with my Excel 1998 running in Classic. Even this works: ! open -a SimpleText junk.txt So at last Application names are cached somewhere with their paths. And about time too. Where? from man open... The open command opens a file (or a directory), just as if you had dou- ble-clicked the file's icon. If no application name is specified, the default application as determined via Finder is used to open the speci- fied files. my emphasis... as determined via Finder So, in fact, you don't even have to do... `open -a Microsoft Excel $foo` because... `open foo.xls` would work just as well, because the Finder knows that .xls has to be opened with Excel. -- Puneet Kishor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opening file with application
John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] contributed On 9/8/02 3:58 PM, John Delacour [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So at last Application names are cached somewhere with their paths. And about time too. Where? Maybe here: /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.LocalCache.csstore but it's binary, and I don't know how it's formatted. -- John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.johnlabovitz.com Obvious thought, but have you tried plist? -- Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opening file with application
John Labovitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded: On 9/8/02 8:01 PM, Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Obvious thought, but have you tried plist? It doesn't seem to be that -- I tried both pl and plutil, and neither wanted to read it. But I have no experience with plists, so maybe I'm not running these correctly... Hmm -- http://www.macaddict.com/osx/hacks/pledit.html talks about PropertyListEditor or something like that. (picked up by searching with google for plist.) They don't let me use my iBook at work, so I can't check what it was I used last, but I keep trying to convince myself that some editor allowed me to load and save compressed plist files. I'm probably confused, though, seems like I spend most of my time confused. Anyway, the file info app (cmd-i) allows you to set the default application for a single file or a file's type, as I recall, which is probably more to the point of the original question, now that I think about it. Plugging that path you mentioned: /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.LocalCache.csstore into google produced three moderately interesting results, too. (Hope you don't mind if I bounce this back to the list. -- Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED]
