Comma-Delimited Files on Macs

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Sun Sep 18 15:29:27 EDT 2011


Gregory Lypny wrote:

> Richard, I’m afraid that changing the extension does not cause the type to change.

It's worse than you think:  file types have no meaning anymore in OS X.

In versions prior to Snow Leopard they did, but they were deprecated in 
Snow Leopard and will eventually be gone from the system entirely.

Instead, the way forward is fully dependent on the file name extension.

One of the byproducts of the loss of file type and creator codes is that 
we no longer have a means of binding a file to a particular app without 
adjusting the "Open With..." settings in the Finder's Get Info window. 
If you choose a reasonably unique file type extension (e.g. ".livecode") 
you have better chances of it launching the app you want, but for more 
generic types it's anyone's guess as to what will happen.

Given the ambiguity inherent in the new paradigm with regard to which 
app will be launched when a document is double-clicked, for generic 
types like "txt" and "csv" the best move is to educate users to open a 
file from within their application.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv




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