Re: Questions on launching Prodos Program from GS/OS

[Oliver Schmidt <ol.sc@web.de>]

Hi David,

>> Is it plausible to assume that advanced GS/OS users are able both to
>> create Icon files and patch file types?
>
>You shouldn't be getting end users to patch your files to have a
>specific file type and auxiliary type - you should supply them with
>these values already set.

I see.

>The problem is that Apple isn't running the registry any
>more, so we're back into the bad old days of risking stepping on each
>others' toes. The best option is to try to pick something suitable and
>ask whether anyone else might have used it already.

I will do - in this group.

>How do you intend to get end users to invoke the application with a
>particular startup file under ProDOS-8? Are you going to require the use
>of a shell which supports the startup protocol?

I got myself several shells/tools which support the startup protocol
for testing purposes. But the application has a quite nice user
interface to "open" files so I don't expect ProDOS 8 users to leverage
that feature. That's the reason I'm interested in how all that works
in GS/OS as that I consider it the only usecase - and if that won't
work well, I'll drop the feature alltogether.

>> Is there a freely available tool running under ProDOS 8 for modifying
>> the file type of a given file?
>
>Probably, but I don't recall using one. I was using the IIgs before
>auxiliary types were all that significant, so I always used
>IIgs-specific tools to manipulate the file type and auxiliary type
>(probably a command line tool under APW or the ORCA shell).

I see.

>The basic mechanism is available in P8 via a SET_FILE_INFO call to the
>ProDOS-8 MLI, so you could do it with a short machine code routine under
>BASIC.SYSTEM: do a GET_FILE_INFO, patch the necessary fields, then
>SET_FILE_INFO.

I tried to avoid that but it looks like I've to do that...

Again thanks for your infos, Oliver