"Helper Application"?

[Bruce Robertson]

> J. Landman Gay wrote:
> 
>> Richard Gaskin wrote:
>>> The RevTalk Dictionary entry for the "environment" function lists
>>> "helper application" as one of the possible values the function can return:
>>> 
>>>    If the environment function returns "helper application",
>>>    Revolution is running as a helper application, configured
>>>    by a web browser to display web-based content.
>>> 
>>> That's not the same as the plugin, is it?  That entry is from the v3.0
>>> dictionary, long before the plugin was even in development.
>>> 
>>> What does it mean for a Rev standalone to be "configured by a web
>>> browser to display web-based content"?
>> 
>> Browsers let you specify what apps to open if they can't display web
>> content themselves. So if you click a .rev link on a web page, and you
>> have assigned the browser to use Rev to open .rev files, then the
>> browser will pass the link off to Revolution and launch it. It's the
>> same as assigning .doc files to Word. I didn't know the environment
>> would change when that happens though.
> 
> Me neither.
> 
> I've used Rev standalones as helper apps before, but IIRC the app just
> gets an odoc event when the browser hands it a stack, and the engine
> doesm't bother to notice whether it was handed the stack from a browser
> or the Finder.
> 
> I suspect this may be a holdover from the olden MC days when it was
> Unix-only.  Would be nice if there was a way a standalone could
> distinguish how it was launched, though.  There's a world of
> opportunities still unexploited with helper apps....

Yup. Take this technique, and point the custom URL to your Rev app. I'm
doing it with FileMaker.

<http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/linktrigger/index.html>