Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

headbirth · Apr 10, 2005, 09:29 AM

anyone know if it's possible via a commandline operation to write a url from the clipboard to a .webloc (mac url clipping file)? is there special coding for this type of file or is itsimple a type/creator thing?

Wevah · Apr 10, 2005, 03:55 PM

Internet Location files (generic .inetloc, http/https .webloc files, etc.) have their data stored in the resource fork, in 'url ' (note final space) resource ID 256. There's no built-in clipboard -> .webloc functionalty, but it's not impossible to write a command-line tool to do it for you.

Well, providing you know your way around the Carbon Resource Manager stuff...

headbirth · Apr 21, 2005, 09:51 AM

Would you be interested in writing such a Command Line Tool that would write to the various types of clipping files supported in X? Maybe even offer other options?

Wevah · 12:12 PM

I actually wrote up a quick tool to do just that with .inetloc, .webloc, etc. files...but I'm scared that it'll break somehow.

It works like:

% iloc http://foo.com/ foo

which will save "http://foo.com/" to foo.webloc (it sets the extension and type code according to the scheme; in this case "http").

You can also pipe in an URL, so if you have an URL copied to your clipboard you can do:

% pbpaste | iloc foo

(Edit: screwed up some prior editing.)

Big Mac · Apr 22, 2005, 12:03 PM

I am surprised that the file employs a resource fork.

Wevah · Apr 22, 2005, 12:11 PM

Yep; they sure do. They're a holdover from OS 8.something, I think.

Big Mac · Apr 22, 2005, 12:27 PM

But then why would they also have the webloc extension? That's the head scratcher. . .

Wevah · Apr 22, 2005, 12:59 PM

No idea, aside from possibly so that other applications can associate with them by extension.

headbirth · Apr 22, 2005, 09:00 PM

Let me know when your tool is ready wevah ... I would love to give it a try. I'm also wondering if Applescript supports something like that.

Have either of you guys heard if Apple intends to do anything with clippings in the future? Enhance then for X? Integrate them with pdf technology? etc...

Wevah · Apr 23, 2005, 09:10 AM

I am going to attempt to have a good version up by Monday, but I can be pretty awful when it comes to meeting deadlines. For now, it is cold and I am tired and trying to decide if I should grab some coffee and stay up, or pass out for a while.

Wevah · 08:04 AM

Alright, I'm a day late, but: iloc 0.1.

Lemme know if you have any suggestions or problems (hopefully it won't wipe your HD, or anything).

Edit: I seem to have screwed up reading from stdin; you have to specify an outfile for it to work. I'll fix this later.

Re-edit: Nevermind; I was using an older version by mistake.

headbirth · Apr 26, 2005, 07:03 PM

Great Wevah.

My first attempt spat out this error.

2005-04-26 19:01:47.833 iloc[1894] FSGetCatalogInfo got error: -35
2005-04-26 19:01:47.835 iloc[1894] FSpCreateResFile got error: -35

Hope that helps.

Wevah · Apr 26, 2005, 07:16 PM

Hmm, -35 is "volume not found". What's the entire command line you're using to invoke it?

headbirth · Apr 27, 2005, 06:50 AM

My mistake.

I'm using OnMyCommand CM for this. What I did initially was name the output the same as the url so that when I tried to make a url of this post I think it was confused about the characters.

Initial code was:

/usr/local/bin/iloc __OBJ_TEXT__ /Users/me/Desktop/__OBJ_TEXT__

I added a dialog for me to name the file and this works fine:

/usr/local/bin/iloc __OBJ_TEXT__ /Users/me/Desktop/__DLG_INPUT_TEXT__

This works great, all I do is highlight the copy, ctrl click and it creates a clipping in a location of my choice.

Thanks Wevah. Any chance of adding picture, rtf, sound support, in the future?

Wevah · Apr 27, 2005, 08:43 AM

Oh, excellent. I figured it was some special-case thing, thoug at least I know that the error can happen (I still need to add more helpful error text, as you can see).

I plan on rolling a lot of this into a larger app, at some point. So yes, I will probably add other clipping formats at some point in the future.

Your initial code might still work, providing you enclose the arguments in quotes:

/usr/local/bin/iloc "__OBJ_TEXT__" "/Users/me/Desktop/__OBJ_TEXT__"

otherwise, if there are spaces in __OBJ_TEXT__ it will think there are more than two arguments...it might still not work, but it's worth a shot if you don't want to have to input the name by hand each time. Though if it's just an URL it should still work...hmmm.

Oh well, it's working for you now, and that's what matters!