{"id":2154,"date":"2009-12-22T17:11:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T21:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=2154"},"modified":"2009-12-22T17:16:25","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T21:16:25","slug":"launchcodes-1-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/22\/launchcodes-1-0\/","title":{"rendered":"LaunchCodes 1.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

LaunchCodes<\/a> (via Matt Deatherage<\/a>) is a clever utility that tries to restore the creator code functionality<\/a> that Apple removed in Snow Leopard. It sort of does for files what Choosy<\/a> does for URLs, acting as a trampoline to receive opened files and redirect them to the proper application. The basic functionality seems to work, but I ran into a few problems:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It doesn’t pass along Apple events. For example, if you find a PDF file using Spotlight or EagleFiler<\/a> and open it, the query should be passed along to the PDF viewer so that it can search within the file. This stops working when you enable LaunchCodes.<\/li>\n
  2. Some of my creatorless files now display in the Finder with generic white document icons.<\/li>\n
  3. Applications can no longer tell which application would be used to open a file. For example, when you select an HTML file in EagleFiler, one of the menu commands<\/a> will say “Open With Safari” and show the Safari icon, and if you select a PDF file it will say “Open With Preview.” Once you enable LaunchCodes, you’ll see “Open With LaunchCodes” and the LaunchCodes icon, which is not very informative.<\/li>\n
  4. It doesn’t handle extensionless files. For example, if TextEdit is your default text application and you double-click a Makefile<\/tt> with creator code 'R*ch'<\/code>, it will open in TextEdit rather than BBEdit<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    (1) seems like a bug that could be fixed. I’m not sure what’s going on with (2); it may be unavoidable since LaunchCodes doesn’t declare any icons for the file types that it handles. Unfortunately, (3) and (4) are probably not fixable given the way LaunchCodes works.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    LaunchCodes (via Matt Deatherage) is a clever utility that tries to restore the creator code functionality that Apple removed in Snow Leopard. It sort of does for files what Choosy does for URLs, acting as a trampoline to receive opened files and redirect them to the proper application. The basic functionality seems to work, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/2157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}