[PD] Spotlight Importer for OS X

[Luke Iannini]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 3:12 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>
> On Jun 27, 2008, at 2:23 AM, Luke Iannini wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner
>> <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Jun 20, 2008, at 2:34 PM, Luke Iannini wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 5:15 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner
>>>> <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 20, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Luke Iannini wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 4:02 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner
>>>>>> <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Does this work at all on 10.4/Tiger?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, it's configured by default to work with both 10.4 and 10.5.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any idea whether it would cause problems on 10.3?  That's not a
>>>>> make-
>>>>> or-break thing, but it would be nice if it could still work on
>>>>> 10.3.
>>>>> As for including the Info.plist changes in v0-40, it would need
>>>>> to be
>>>>> throughly tested before including it.  Currently, there are only a
>>>>> couple outstanding bugs that need to be fixed for this release
>>>>> (AFAIK), so I am really hesitant to include something totally new.
>>>>>
>>>> According to this http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2005/
>>>> qa1406.html the
>>>> public.plain-text UTI we're using existed in 10.3.  Also, this seems
>>>> to be a transitional document for 10.3>10.4, and doesn't include any
>>>> callouts except:  "Note: UTIs are available in Mac OS X v10.3
>>>> Panther
>>>> and later. Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger added many new types and integrated
>>>> support throughout the operating system."
>>>>
>>>> So I think it won't be a problem for the keys in the plist, and
>>>> in the
>>>> future, 10.3 should just ignore the
>>>> Library/Spotlight/PureData.mdimporter file just as it would
>>>> ignore any
>>>> other file it didn't recognize in the bundle.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, sounds like it is worth trying to add the Info.plist UTI stuff to
>>> this release.  Feel free to add it now to branches/pd-extended/v0-40,
>>> but please test it.
>>>
>>> .hc
>>>
>> Yo, sorry I didn't read that closely and thought you were comfortable
>> with adding the whole kit n' kaboodle, sorry about that.
>
> It just seems to be a big unknown, and adding a big unknown in the
> last days before releasing has bitten me before.
>
> Which reminds me: Could you give a specific example of what the
> Spotlight Importer does?  I don't quite get it.
Sure -

Spotlight searches not only filenames but file contents for your
search terms, so it would pull up "Theory and Techniques of Electronic
Music"'s PDF if you searched for "Fourier", for example (since a PDF
Spotlight importer is built in to OS X).  So, with the Pd file
importer, it will pull up not only "I01.Fourier.analysis.pd", but
"I02.Hann.window.pd", "I03.resynthesis.pd", etc. as well, since they
contain the word "Fourier" in their comments.*

It also works with objects, so you can find every patch containing "fiddle~".

And, as I mentioned, you can use it to implement, e.g. a "TODO/FIXME"
tracker by creating a smart folder (aka saved search) that searches
for Pd files containing those words.

*It will only find files if they're outside of the Pd bundle, so I
guess that's a drawback (but I'll see if I can find a way to force it
to search within the bundle)

Cheers
Luke

(and by the way, this is a common practice lest you think I'm doing
something nutty : ); Apple includes source code importers for c,
obj-c, ruby, python etc when you install XCode, and most OS X apps
with a custom file format include a Spotlight importer.

The next step would be to add real Quick Look support to show a
preview of the patch's appearance as the icon and QL view (right now
it just shows the plaintext version of the pd file).  Anyone have any
insight on that?  Perhaps just a separate Tcl generator would work...

>
>
> .hc
>
>>
>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As for building it, how do you build it yourself?  That's
>>>>>>> usually a
>>>>>>> good starting point for adding it to the auto-build.  If it is an
>>>>>>> xcode project, you can use the command line tool xcodebuild.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yo,
>>>>>> I just built in with the build button : ).  I like buttons...
>>>>>> So yea, I have the project.  Looks like it builds aok with
>>>>>> xcodebuild,
>>>>>> thanks for the tip.  Where should I put the project folder?
>>>>>
>>>>> Good question. The first place I thought of is packages/darwin_app
>>>>> since it is only for things related to the Pd.app for Mac OS X.
>>>>> Maybe:
>>>>>
>>>>> packages/darwin_app/spotlight_importer
>>>>>
>>>>> Then it probalby makes sense to make a separate
>>>>> 'spotlight_importer:'
>>>>> target in packages/darwin_app/Makefile to build and install it.
>>>>>
>>>>> .hc
>>>>
>>>> Will do.
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Luke
>>>
>>>
>>>
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