At 12:41 -0700 20/3/13, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) wrote:
> > And the situation is more complex again on Mac,... you can have up to half > > a dozen apps that can open, say, a PDF.) > >Hmmm .... I would have thought (but not certain) that the current OS X release >did not use the file name extension to select the app for opening PDF files. >It _probably_ looks at the magic bytes just like other UNIX systems. Not sure but can check. What I do know is that the file type byte can be honored, but you can also set a chosen app for all files of a specific type (identified how, one wonders) - but that it is not always 100% foolproof. But I'm several OS X versions behind the leading edge anyway. This sort of stuff makes my head hurt these days, but these links might help, if anyone cares: <https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/understanding_utis/understand_utis_intro/understand_utis_intro.html> <http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1762250&seqNum=6> >Which, in the case of PDF files, would be the leading bytes "%PDF-" inside the >files. Maybe. >A question though: if you have more than one app available to open a PDF file, >how does OS X actually select which app to use? The user procedure is set the default app for a file is to do a 'get info' on a file of the type in question. That displays a dialog that allows you to choose the app to open that file when clicked, with an option to extend your choice to all files of that type. Or you can just drag the file onto the chosen app's icon in the Dock. I cited PDFs because it's probably the file type with most launch options on the average professional's Mac: Preview (Apple's default PDF reader), Acrobat, Adobe Reader, Illustrator, GraphicConverter (a shareware graphic file manipulator), PDFPen, and so on...) >In Windows, there is one default for each extension, but you can override that >with a right-mouse-click on the file in Explorer, followed by a "Open With >..." and then select/specify the app. Yup, I use Windows as well. I guess there is no one 'best' way to handle this sort of thing, and OS X can be cumbersome in this regard - like, you really really don't want Illustrator to open a PDF when you click on it unless you *really* want it to, and so on. -- Steve [Trim e-mails: use less disk, use less power, use less planet]
