Re: Finding all applications

On 6/1/02 10:19 PM, "Rick Bradley" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> * Chris Gehlker ([e-mail]) [020601 23:56]:
>> I expect to be able to search a 50 gig HD in milliseconds for queries like
>> "show me all the documents originally created with application X" or "show
>> me all the programs that the current user has permission to execute".
> 
> In the Unix world in general (which OSX is now a part of), there's
> historically been no metadata for determining sytematically the creator
> of a file [0].  Some suffixes are helpful in determining the format of a
> file but this says little about the creating application [1], much less
> a preferred reader [2].

Ah, I didn't mean to imply  that I could find all the files created by any
given application now. Given a file it's pretty easy to determine the
preferred reader for the current user in OSX because you can look in
Users/<username>/Library/Preferences. I haven't quite figured out howto
determine the username of the person who launched RubyStudio though. And the
converse, given application X, what are the members of the set of local
files for which it is the preferred reader, is something I just don鵠 know
how to address programmatically. The question must have come up before
though. 

> That aside most legacy *n*x filesystems don't provide even the basic
> sorts of indices you're looking for.  Simple userland add-ons like
> locate/findb provide quick name-based searching.  There are, however, a
> large number of filesystems available (something one doesn't tend to see
> in the Windows world, but hopefully will see more of in the OSX world)
> on various *n*x platforms.  I seem to recall some fs-as-db filesystems
> getting some news recently in the *n*x world.  Perhaps that's worth a
> look.
> 
> [0] the "magic number" applies in many cases, but in many others
>   it doesn't and there's no forcing a developer to use that
>   mechanism
> [1] e.g., an .html file generally contains HTML, but its creator
>   could be any text manipulator from cat(1) to Lyx
> [2] off the top of my head I know that Mozilla, NS4.72, Konqueror,
>   Opera, w3m, lynx, links, and emacs-www are installed on my (FreeBSD)
>   system, and all of those browsers get use (by me) from time to time.

So what happens when you  double click an html file. KDE must do something.

-- 
Cogito Ergo Spud. - I think therefore I yam.