On 18.08.2009, at 17:18, Gary C Martin wrote: > Hi Bert, > > On 18 Aug 2009, at 09:10, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > >> On 17.08.2009, at 23:34, Gary C Martin wrote: >> >>> For the Mac users, it's just "Drag this application to your >>> application folder." Done, end of story. For the worst application >>> offenders (and there are some, usually some of the big corps who can >>> get away with it) the user is asked for their admin password, but >>> this >>> always looks like shoddy, dodgy application development from >>> developers who don't really know what they are doing on a Mac. >> >> Gary, this is highly unfair to Mac developers. >> >> Self-contained bundles can be installed just by drag-and-drop >> indeed. But you need an installer (which might ask for an admin >> password) to integrate with the system, e.g. to install QuickLook >> plugins which generates previews for your documents, or SpotLight >> for indexing. And obviously the "big corps" do define their own >> document types, and want them to integrate with the system. Users >> expect them to. >> >> E.g., Etoys needs an installer on the Mac to put its web browser >> plugin in the right library folder. It does nothing "evil", the >> main app could as well be installed by drag-and-drop, but we can't >> expect everyone to manually install the plugin. Also, the plugin >> needs to know where to find the app so we must require the app to >> be installed into /Applications. And once we have a QuickLook >> plugin we will need to install that too. Now you may call Etoys >> development "shoddy and dodgy" all you like, but please blame it >> for its actual faults. > > Hmmm.... Sorry Bert, but pretty sure everything you mention above > (QuickLook, SpotLight indexing, file document types/icons, web > plugins) for can go in the users ~/Library with absolutely no need > to request admin permissions for the whole system (affecting all > users).
Not if an install for all users is what you want. Like when Dad installs this on the family Mac for his kids. > I agree you might want to use an installer rather than drag and > drop, though first run of an App could put these extras in place as > needed. Each user installing a separate copy of the plugins in her home directory does not exactly sound clean to me. It's certainly not recommended by Apple - their policy is drag-and-drop for simple apps, installer for more complex ones. > As for hard-coding a path to /Applications, you can ask the system > to tell you the path to the application bundle, but if I remember, > there are a few cases where even Apple slips up on this one (and I'm > sure causes no end of bug reports and support calls for Apple when > folks system upgrade after moving such an Application) – so I won't > diss you too much for that hack ;-) > > Also as an alternitive, if you have control of the file format > bundle, QuickLook previews and SpotLight indexes can also live > there, though I understand that you'll likely want to keep with an > existing cross-platform file format that can't take advantage. Precisely. > So I'd say Etoys could just be a single drag'n'drop Mac application > into Applications folder (that does it's extras on first run, MS Mac > apps do this quite a bit), or at the very least a regular package > installer with no need for the admin password. > > Apologies for the off list topic reply. > > Regards, > --Gary > > P.S. So, can I have a job now making Etoys truly Mac friendly ;-) That would be wonderful! Join the etoys developers list at http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/etoys-dev - Bert - _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel