Subject: AbiWord for MacOS X (was: Re: How to build the Aiksaurus plugin?)
From: Hubert Figuiere (hfiguiere@teaser.fr)
Date: Tue Oct 23 2001 - 08:18:23 CDT
According to F J Franklin <F.J.Franklin@sheffield.ac.uk>:
> But it ought to be easy to install plugins and dictionaries system-wide as
> well, and having to install them inside bundles is awkward, especially
> since (I'm guessing) to many Mac users an application is an application is
> an application and what the hell is a bundle anyway? (Recently a friend
> of mine, who has used Macs since I was in nappies, asked me WTF a bundle
> bit was... like I would know.)
Sounds reasonnable. So AbiSuite should be i /Library
BTW, a bundle bit is for MacOS < X where a bundle designate an association
beetween an App (with its own creator code), document types and their icons.
An application that has a the bundle bit set (this is a filesystem meta-data
attribute) will make the Finder take care of checking its bundle upon
copying it the disk.
> Opera etc. are installed in /Applications as folders, so I don't think
> it's anything too abnormal.
It is abnormal. This is what raw carbon port (ie application built like a
MacOS 9 Carbon app) does. These apps are usually dual forked executable (ie
MacOS 9 style) rather that bundle executable (the NeXT style).
AbiWord will be the later anyway.
> Yes, bundle services is probably the way to go, though how the Finder
> locale and AbiWord's locale methods can/will interact I have no idea.
The problem is mapping UNIX locale name (ISO codes) with NeXT style locale
names which are less versatile but more verbose....
> I'm a little stuck on NIB files. Are they static, or can they be altered
> after loading - for example, could new entries be added to a list of
> supported file types in the Open/Insert File/Image dialogues if plugins
> are found?
NIB file are just static interface description. You can modify the GUI at
run time after having created it.
For localization, 2 solution:
1/ runtime localization by modifying each control (what is done with the
UNIX build for example)
2/ NIB localization which means duplication of NIB files.
Here are my thought.
But lets start on major issues first.
Hub
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