Steve King wrote:
In the meantime, does anyone have any further guidance on what I have to put
in the various OSX standalone builder screen fields (if anything)
It's a long answer which is why you probably didn't get immediate
replies. There are lots of uses for plist ("property list") files on a
Mac, but in this case it stores file data about your application. You
can think of it as a sort of individualized registry. What Windows
installers would put into registry entries, OS X stores in a plist file
inside the application bundle. That's one reason OS X doesn't very often
need installers. The app can simply be copied to the drive and all its
file association data comes along with it.
Whenever the file system needs to work with the app, OS X looks at its
plist to know what icons it uses, its version number and info, what
files it can open, which files it can create, and other things. What you
put into Rev's plist fields determines a lot of this. Your best bet for
now is to let Rev generate the plist for you, after you fill in the fields.
Working down the window:
Build for Universal if you want all OS X users to be able to run your
app. If you're building for a few friends and you know they all use
Intel Macs, then you can build for Intel-only, which saves a lot of disk
space.
The application icon should be one you create in an icon editor and save
in .icns format. This is the icon your users will see on the desktop. If
your app creates document files, then you should assign a document icon
too. If you don't, users will see a text file icon as a default for any
files your app makes.
Ask and answer dialogs on OS X display a small application icon at the
left side. You need to create these according to strict size guidelines
(see gRevAppIcon and gRevSmallAppIcon in the dictionary) and store them
as hidden images in your stack. Put the image IDs in these fields or use
the selector to choose them from your stack images. You can leave these
fields blank if you want. If you do that, there will be no icons in the
dialog boxes. That breaks OS X rules, but most users probably won't notice.
The remaining fields, except for the signature and document type, should
be self-explanatory. The name is your app name, the short version is the
numerical version only ("1.0.4") and the long version includes the name
("MyApp 1.0.4"). The Get Info string is what users see when they open
the Mac equivalent of the Properties dialog: you can put anything here,
but usually I put the long version in there too. Rev fills out the
copyright notice pretty well for you, but you usually need to add your
company name to it.
The Bundle Identifier is a string that identifies your company and
product according to a strict rule order that looks a bit like a reverse
domain name. It generally starts with "com" if you're a company,
followed by your company's name, followed by the product name. There
should be no spaces and no capitals. My identifier for Zygodact is
"com.hyperactivesw.zygodact". There should be 3 parts separated by
periods. You can abbreviate or alter your company name slightly if you
want to; the important part is that you are consistent in using the same
identifier name for every app you create. The Finder uses this info to
track and catalog your app in various ways.
I left signature and document type for last because they need
explanation, so back up to the middle of the window.
OS X uses 4-character strings to identify the app and its documents. The
application string is called its signature. It can be anything you want,
but it must be unique from any other OS X app. For this reason, Apple
keeps a registry of application signatures, and if you plan to
distribute your app commercially you need to apply for one. It's free,
you just need to get into the database. This assures you that your app
won't be mistaken for a different one on someone's machine and that your
app will retain all its unique icons and be associated with the correct
files. There are a few rules, but basically you need to stick to
mixed-case 4-character strings. There's more on Apple's registration
page: <http://developer.apple.com/datatype/index.html>
If you don't plan to distribute commercially then you can invent any
4-character signature you want, and just hope that anyone else who runs
your app won't already have an app installed with the same signature.
Keep your signature mixed-case; Apple reserves all-cap and all
lower-case for itself. For example, the signature I registered for
Zygodact is "ZygD". You can see examples of various app signatures if
you google it.
The document type does not need to be registered. You can make up your
own, or use an existing type. You can also assign several types if your
app can handle them (i.e., all image types, for example.) If your app
creates text files, then use TEXT as the type and "txt" as the
extension. If it creates stacks, you can use Rev's stack type: RSTK,
with extension "rev". Or you can make up your own type. It doesn't much
matter, but your scripts need to set the same stackfiletype or filetype
before writing to disk, otherwise the files you create won't match your
plist. If your app doesn't make any files, you can just leave the
document type blank. It won't be used.
Having said all that, the latest version of OS X is doing away with
these codes. You still need them for users on older Macs though, and if
they exist the latest OS X will also use them. Trivia here, if you are
interested:
<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/22/inside_snow_leopards_uti_apple_fixes_the_creator_code.html>
I've put a screen shot of the Zygodact OS X standalone settings here for
reference: <http://jacque.on-rev.com/extras/zygoSettingsExample.png>
--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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