Linking Files to Applications [Was: Disk Utility/RESOLVED [TID]]

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Jan 21, 2004, at 11:33 Canada/Eastern, J wrote:

>> These are two different issues; under OS X there is more than one 
>> mechanism of linking files to applications.
>
> Yes and I tried them all. Not only over the phone but I did myself 
> when I got there....they would neither drag over the icon, nor open 
> with, nor get info, nor by contextual menu.....

There's some misunderstanding here. You're talking opening files. I'm 
talking _linking_ files to applications.

Here's how it works under OS X.

When a user double-clicks on a document, Finder uses the following info 
to determine what to do: (a) type and creator codes, (b) filename 
extension, (c) user choice.

(a) is the traditional Mac way; if you're a consultant and an OS 9 fan 
(as you appear to be), then you're thoroughly familiar with them. For 
Mac newbies (as opposed to OS X newbies), type and creator codes are 
four-character codes used by the Mac OS to determine the type of a file 
and the application owning it. Although it's a more advanced method 
than the file name extension, the Mac OS is moving away from it, 
because, as the rest of the world shows no sign of adapting the Mac, 
the Mac needs to adapt to the rest of the world. Nevertheless, Apple 
still recommends their use, chiefly for compatibility with the Classic 
environment. In normal use, these codes are invisible to the user, but 
they can be manipulated with such utilities as SuperGetInfo or 
FileBuddy, etc.

(b) is the method used by ROW (the rest of the world) and, under X, by 
Mac OS. The file name extension consists in the the characters to the 
right of the last period in the file name. In your case it didn't work 
for obvious reasons. When the file named

something.cwk

was renamed to "something.cwk", the file name extension was changed from

.cwk

to

.cwk"

The Finder didn't know what to do with it because it didn't have any 
application registered to open files with this file name extension.

(c) The user choice is set using Get Info > Open With in Finder. In 
this manner, you can link any document to any application irrespective 
of its type/creator codes or file name extension. Finder will show you 
what is the default choice (the application owning the file through its 
creator code, or registered to handle that extension), recommended 
applications (if you choose Other... from the drop-down menu), or all 
applications (if you choose the Show: All Applications option).

The order in which Finder does all this is: user choice for this 
particular file > user choice for all files similar to this one > 
default app for this type of file or extension > app which claims this 
type of file or extension; native or newer apps are always preferred 
over Classic or older apps.

Now you see what I meant. When you double-clicked

"something.cwk"

Finder should have told you it had no app registered to handle this 
kind of file, and offered you a dialogue to choose an application to 
open it (and, by default, go straight to the Applications folder). If 
AppleWorks was greyed out, you should have chosen Show All 
Applications, then it should have become available. If it didn't, there 
was a problem with the system. Alternatively, if you did a Get Info > 
Open With > etc., and again, AppleWorks was still greyed out even with 
the Show All Apps option, then there was a problem.

f