[kupan787]

I was wondering a few things:

1) How hard is it to write a service, and waht language must it be in (C, Objective-C, etc...)
2) Would it be possible to write a service that would save the current document as a different type (say as a word/appleworks/excel file)?

I ask, because I would like to see a service that did what MacLinkPlus did (convert the current document into almost any format). Is there any where I could go to pick up information on the Word, Excel, and AppleWorks file types so I can do converting to and from them?

Thanks

[starfleetX]

I think you're looking at quite a daunting task, but I'll give you a short answer. Only Cocoa (ObjC or Java) programs can use services. Services are possible because of Cocoa's OO-nature. Carbon programs can not have services simply because they are inherently procedural and thus not OO. There's plenty of discussion on this topic elsewhere on this board if you look around.

As for saving something as a different format, it'd be easiest to write a program whose sole task is to convert your files. Of course, you'd have to get documentation straight from Apple, Microsoft, etc. on the headers, layout, and basic structure of those formats first. I don't really know how easy or difficult that will be, but you could always try reverse-engineering the files through some tedious trial and error.

It sounds like an ambitious project, biting off more than I'd want to chew, but could prove interesting if you actually pursue it. Let us know if you decide to start working on this.