Re: Some forward movement on Virtual Serial Host

[Hugh Hood <hughhood@earthlink.net>]

David:

When the AppleWorks Spotlight Importer is ready, I'll ask for some beta
testers to check it out before its unleashed. Let me know if you're
interested.

FWIW, I've already got the OS X Finder and LaunchServices recognizing the
AppleWorks file types and displaying (3) AWP/ADB/ASP custom icons and proper
Finder Info 'Kind' description.

For example, here's a screen shot of an OS X Finder 'Get Info' window for
one of my AppleWorks word processor files:

<http://home.earthlink.net/~hughhood/getinfoawp.jpg>

This project has been complicated by the fact that AppleWorks uses 15 of the
16 bits in the ProDOS AuxType to control upper/lowercase. That leads to
'lots' of Mac OSTypes. In fact, there are 98,304 {32,768 x 3} possible
AppleWorks FileType/Aux Type combinations due to upper/lower filenames.

Otherwise, this would have entailed much less work. But, there will only be
(3) UTI's.

This same technique should be functional for all the other Apple II file
types, but I'll leave the Icon building to someone else. My (3) AppleWorks
Icons taxed my artistic abilities, and they're _very_ utilitarian.

The Spotlight Importer (at least for AWP files) has been made easier to code
thank's to Andy McFaddin's awp2txt command line utility. That will allow
indexing of the text content of the AWP files, and I have thousands of those
files.

Probably more than you ever cared to know, I suspect.

Finally, I apologize for stepping on Kevin's thread. His Virtual Serial Host
is way cool.





Hugh Hood




in article kcg700$2jh$1@dont-email.me, David Schmidt at schmidtd@my-deja.com
wrote on 1/7/13 10:23 PM:

> On 1/7/2013 11:21 PM, Hugh Hood wrote:
>> I'm
>> currently 'learning' some Obj-C in order to write a Spotlight Importer for
>> AppleWorks (Apple II) files, provided I don't completely lose my mind first.
>> NSThis and NSThat, oh man!
> 
> Oh, do share once you're done... I'm envisioning CiderPress-style
> awareness of Apple II files from the Finder...