Localized Read Me Files
With Tiger, Mac OS X no longer hides the .app extension, so one can see that the Read Me file included with iTunes 4.8 is, despite its RTF icon, a Cocoa application. Inside it are 14 localized .rtf files. When you launch the application, it uses open to open the correct .rtf file and then quits. The other interesting feature is that since the Read Me application is a bundle, its name can be localized. On my machine, it shows up as Read Before You Install iTunes.app, but on a German system it would say Vor der Installation von iTunes lesen.app. You always see the iTunes4.mpkg file accompanied by a single Read Me in your own language.
When did Apple start doing this [creating Read Me files as applications]? There’s a third-party utility in beta that can create such applications, but I wasn’t aware that Apple had blessed this design or provided its own tool for creating them.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
Application names have always been localised and creating such a readme 'file' has always been easy.
Making an application look like a text file makes feel uneasy. It's what the virus creators do.
The iPod manual has been such an application that launches the appropriate localised PDF for a long time, maybe even from the start. I will check.
Clever & stupid too.
It's supposed to be a document. If you want to pack multiple versions together in a special bundle, fine but don't make it an application that looks like a file, just program the system system to recognise and handle this kind of bundle.
