[X4U] Re: Default application to open pdf on double click, and icon

[stephen e. schwartz]

After much trial and error I found an almost perfect solution to my
problem, and in the process I understand system 10.4 a bit better than I
did previously.

Evidently system 10.4 will not allow a classic app to be the default app to
open a file type (at least under some set of circumstances; I am not sure I
wholly understand its ground rules.)

But I found the following workaround: Select a pdf document, and in the
file: get info window make the default app to open the document acrobat
reader 7. And in the same window instruct it to do so for all files of this
type in the dialog. The window allows this and does not revert (as it did
when I tried to have acrobat 4 be the default).

This changes the double click default of all pdf's to acrobat 7. But if
acrobat 4 is on (and reader 7 is not) then when one double clicks any pdf
document, the application to open the document rolls over to acrobat 4 (in
classic) as desired.

The icons did not immediately revert back to acrobat icons, but they did on
a restart, and retained their file creation date. Whoopee!

I am reporting this on the odd chance that anyone else ever faces such a
problem.

-steve

-----


>
>Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:08:08 -0400
>From: "stephen e. schwartz" <ses at bnl.gov>
>Subject: [X4U] Default application to open pdf on double click, and
>	icon
>To: x4u at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
>Message-ID: <l0313030ac48468374265@[192.168.0.101]>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>I prefer to open pdf documents in acrobat 4 in classic (I have the full
>app; this allows me to underscore, make notes etc).
>
>I used to have this as the default app to open files by double clicking.
>This has worked fine for years.
>
>Somehow something has gotten royally messed up. If I generate a document
>and save to pdf using distiller via the print dialog, it saves it as a
>colorsync utility document. Ditto for pdf attachments coming in on email.
>Ditto pdf files that I save to disk using firefox.
>
>Worse, many (but not all) of the multitude of pdfs on my hard drive have
>had their icon changed to a generic pdf document icon (a couple of stacked
>photos) and the default app changed to colorsync.
>
>In principle I should select a .pdf document, do file info on it, change
>the app to open it with using the pull down menu (this works, although it
>changes the file date to now); get the dialog that asks if I want to do
>this with all; confirm that I do. What happens is that the file that I just
>told to open with acrobat 4 reverts to colorsync and no other files change.
>
>Somehow colorsync has taken over commmand. This behavior persists even if
>colorsync is off (which is hard for me to keep that way because I have a
>habit of double clicking pdf files).
>
>I removed colorsync put it in the trash. And my computer started making
>illustrator CS2 the default app for pdfs.
>
>So a bunch of questions.
>
>1. Any idea why I get nowhere by trying to get all my acrobat 4.0 documents
>to open with acrobat 4.0?
>
>2. I would really like to do a global change of all .pdf documents to open
>with acrobat 4.0 but would NOT like to change the file modified date. Any
>idea how?
>
>OS 10.4.11.
>
>By the way in the pull down menu on the get info page I have 8 apps above
>the line and 10 (including acrobat 4.0) below the line, if that matters.
>
>And you will probably want to know what brought this around. the short
>answer, I think, is that I used colorsync to read a pdf document, and
>everything went downhill from there.
>
>And one more clue: If I _do_ change the default app for a single document
>to acrobat, the icon shows up as some sort of unrecognized hairy looking
>blob; if I select that icon in the get info dialog page and delete it, I
>get a nice clean looking acrobat icon. But this procedure does change the
>file modify date.
>
>I would welcome suggestions.
>
>thanks
>
>-steve
>