[cbellers]

Okay, I know I'm not the only person who is thinking that Classic can be a big pain in the kiester. Here's my situation:

I have a lower-end mac (iBook 466MHz G3, 196MB) and I hate clicking on things like SimpleText files, which are simple, and text, only to have to wait 5 minutes while the little gnomes start turning the wheels that boot up Classic.

Is there an app or a default that I can set that will let me change simpletext files to be opened by TextEdit, instead of having to wait for this blasted Classic environment to load?

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--Arthur C. Clarke

[xelA]

First, get info ([cmd]+[I]) on one of the files. From the pop-up, choose 'Application'. In this pane, there is 'open this document with' & 'generic application for this type...'. Set the generic one to TextEdit, & choose that radio button.

In the future, though, it'll be easier. Just add '.txt' to the end of your text files & that should open them in TextEdit defaultly. (I know, file extensions aren't very Mac-like, but they're really quite usefull, I've found.)

.xelA--

[cbellers]

Oh, I dont mind putting extentions on.. I'm not a MacOS user at all. I'm a UNIX and NT guy who's been looking for something better. I used to lament the death of NeXTStep, so I'm really excited about OS X. But I dont have adequate words to express my deep and abiding hatred for MacOS. I want nothing to do with Classic or MacOS 9.

As far as your tip to change the generic application for the document type, I couldnt do that: the "Change Application..." button is greyed out, and will not let me alter it.

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--Arthur C. Clarke

[cbellers]

Actually, what I REALLY want to do is to simply tell X to open ALL Simpletext file types with TextEdit.

[torifile]

I would love to be able to do that too, but it doesn't seem to work right just yet. The way I get around it is to drag the document to the textedit icon. It'll open it right away. You can put the icon in your toolbar in the finder, find your file and drag. All in a little more time then double clicking. HTH

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by cbellers:
Actually, what I REALLY want to do is to simply tell X to open ALL Simpletext file types with TextEdit.

Despite your hatred for OS9 you could do that with a few clicks of the mouse in it

Perhaps it was greyted out because you didn't have sufficient permission - try using root to do it (su)... or something. I dunno. I'm a MacOS dude, not UNIX...


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[theMacDude]

Cipher could be correct. Or, it could be that the simpletext doc is one of the "read only" type and that's why you couldn't change it.



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-jjh
Did you know that this would happen?

[iRebound]

my change application button are grayed out too when I get info on the read me file

Same thing goes with the pic created with PictureViewer and I wanted them to open in the Preview app. The only way to do that is change the creator of my picture files to 'prvw'

I couldn't do that with the TextEdit app.

[dtriska]

I do something similar to what torifile suggested:

I have the TextEdit icon in the Dock. When I want to open text files with TextEdit, I drag and drop the files onto the TextEdit icon. That's it.

[shavendave]

cbellers:

You can keep using SimpleText if you install the Developer Tools. You'll find SimpleText 1.4 here:

/Developer/Examples/Carbon/Simpletext

After installation, the Cocoa SimpleText should launch when you double-click any SimpleText file.

All these worarounds are fine. I also drag my jpgs onto Quicktime and the textfiles onto TextEdit.
But: since this cool feature to change default applications is there, there SHOULD be a way to use it.
I tried log in as root, but still: option to change default app is greyed out.
Anyone out there who did it?

Stefan

Yep, I was able to change the default app to TextEdit.
Only to find that after closing the "Get Info" window, everything
changed back to the previous state. Darn , and I thought I had it...

[Stefan]

Originally posted by Mr_Frost:
Yep, I was able to change the default app to TextEdit.
Only to find that after closing the "Get Info" window, everything
changed back to the previous state. Darn , and I thought I had it...

Ok, seems to be a bug then. But still: how did you do it? Isn't it greyed out or did you do it any other way?

Stefan

http://homepage.mac.com/mr_frost/PhotoAlbum1.html

Check it out.
Fixed it the easy way. search for Simpletext with Sherlock.
delete every Classic simpletext app you can find. (There is
a Carbon Simpletext app on the developer cd anyway, so don't worry)
Once all classic simpletexts are deleted the Change application isn't greyed out in the get info box anymore.
There has to be an easier way but untill there is this worked fine for me.

[[email protected]]

OK Now that I downloaded Acrobat Reader 5 for X I want to have all my .pdf files open in Acrobat Reader. Someone figure this out will yah. My change application button is greyed out as well.

[sizzle chest]

Mr. Frost's solution is the one I've used, when certain documents double-clicked in OSX tend to want to open in a "Classic" app, when an OSX-native app version is available. Just go through your hard drive and delete all instances of the Classic app (Stuffit Expander, Simple Text, Acrobat Reader, etc.) and empty your trash. Then the next time you double-click a document or item with that file type, it'll open properly with the OSX-native app once it can't find the Classic app it used before.

[muchfresh]

any one figure out what to do with the greyed out 'change application' button? I really don't want to delete the corresponding OS 9 applications.

I am trying to change my .sit files to open with the OSX version. When Dl from IE it always tries to boot classic. and I can't change the generic application for .sit.

PS. I would love it if apple would come out with exteneded attributes like Be.

In OS X, you can "Show Info " on a file and designate a particular application to open that specific file, or designate a particular application to open all files with that extension (i.e. .txt or .jpg). Unfortunately, someone at Apple had the "stroke of genius" to disable the latter functionality if the file in question had a Creator/Type code from OS 9. So OS X essentially defers to an OS 9 setting, and this is why the Change Application button is disabled. Now I don't know if this is a "feature" or a bug, but it certainly is annoying when Classic starts to try to launch SimpleText or PictureViewer when you have TextEdit and Preview that can do the job natively! And it is downright infuriating when OS X will only let you change this behavior on a file by file basis.

The only workaround I've found is to change the default application on a file by file basis. While this is certainly not the optimal solution, it isn't as bad as it could be. It turns out that you can in fact change the default application for MULTIPLE files at one time. Simply select all the files in question in the Finder, bring up the Show Info screen and make the change. This will in fact make the change for all the selected files even though the information displayed in the Show Info window makes it seem like it is only dealing with one file.

OAW

[ppmax]

another solution is to delete or uninstall os 9. im trying to see how much i can rely on X alone and have removed 9 from my system. OS X has only tried to start classic (even tho i have no classic) once or twice, so this is working nearly perfect for me.

ppmax

[clarkgoble]

What we really need is for Apple to add an "Open With..." command to the context menu. Windows Explorer has a "Send to..." command with similar functionality. (Although Windows being Windows, it has lots of annoying quirks as well and can be a pain at times)

It's been a while since I used it, but I recall BeOS dealing with this in a very user friendly and powerful way. Too bad Apple doesn't copy BeOS here.

[blythe]

Originally posted by muchfresh:
any one figure out what to do with the greyed out 'change application' button? I really don't want to delete the corresponding OS 9 applications.

You don't have to permanently delete the applications. Simply archive all instances of classic SimpleText (using DropStuff or DropZip) and delete the original applications. Then open up a SimpleText file while in OS X using the carbon version of SimpleText from the dev install. From now on, any time you double-click a SimpleText document in OS X, it will open with the carbonized version. Now you can unarchive your classic SimpleText. Just make sure you don't manually start up a classic SimpleText while in OS X, and you will have the carbonized version open up all the time when you double-click a SimpleText document.



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blythe

[blythe]

Originally posted by blythe:
You don't have to permanently delete the applications. Simply archive all instances of classic SimpleText (using DropStuff or DropZip) and delete the original applications. Then open up a SimpleText file while in OS X using the carbon version of SimpleText from the dev install. From now on, any time you double-click a SimpleText document in OS X, it will open with the carbonized version. Now you can unarchive your classic SimpleText. Just make sure you don't manually start up a classic SimpleText while in OS X, and you will have the carbonized version open up all the time when you double-click a SimpleText document.

I just did a test, and you actually can manually open up and use the classic SimpleText after following the steps I outlined. Your SimpleText documents will continue to open in the carbonized version.



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blythe

[Mediaman_12]

Just looked for the carbon Simpletext on the dev tools disk. It's uncompiled . I don't want to install 300mb of dev tools (of which I have no need) just for Simpletext. How about someone, mailing me the compiled version (or sticking it up on the net).

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[Since EBCDIC]

The Carbonized SimpleText in my /Developer/Examples/Carbon directory is compiled. Try to navigate there in the Finder and double-clicking on it.

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Since EBCDIC
Make every post count!

[Mediaman_12]

For everyone who wants the Carbon SimpleText, but would rather not compile.
Carbonised SimpleText is at http://www.mediachrome.co.uk/staging...-1.4carbon.tgz
I won't be keeping it there for long, (works server)

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[Elder Dan]

Unfortunately, this is a side-effect of actually retaining and respecting creator and type codes. Everyone is upset that creator and type codes aren't used *more* and yet they are also upset when creator and types that do exist are actually respected. If a document has a creator code and that creator app is on the system, the system will respect that. The greyed-out effect in Get Info is an indicator that the document is "strongly typed", that it has an explicit creator app above and beyond its generic document type, and unfortunately this supercedes a lot of the system's attempts to be smart and flexible about what can open that document.

[naepstn]

Another workaround, though not the greatest one, is to keep the Carbonized version open. As long as it is open, the system should use that one instead of starting Classic. This is what I do with Stuffit Expander for downloaded .sit archives. I have Carbon Stuffit Expander launch on login and because it uses next to no resources when doing nothing, it's not bad. Now, Classic doesn't start up whenever I download a .sit file.

Will try Blythe's workaround for Stuffit when I get home. Hope it works, cause it would be better.

Cheers!

[Geobunny]

Originally posted by Elder Dan:
Unfortunately, this is a side-effect of actually retaining and respecting creator and type codes. Everyone is upset that creator and type codes aren't used *more* and yet they are also upset when creator and types that do exist are actually respected. If a document has a creator code and that creator app is on the system, the system will respect that. The greyed-out effect in Get Info is an indicator that the document is "strongly typed", that it has an explicit creator app above and beyond its generic document type, and unfortunately this supercedes a lot of the system's attempts to be smart and flexible about what can open that document.

The problem isn't that creator code and types are not being respected, they are. The problem is that they're not being respected properly. The OS should open up the most recent version of the designated application (as it does in OS 9) provided it resides on a mounted drive.

If you have two hard drives and a network drive mounted, the OS should look for the most recent version on the current startup drive and if no version at all exists on that drive, it then and only then looks on the other mounted drive and then the network drive for a version of the application.

OS X doesn't do this. My guess is that it either looks for and launches the first classic app version it finds, on any drive rather than looking for the most recent version be it cocoa, carbon or classic.

The order OS X needs to use is:
1: Look for a cocoa version of the desired application
2: Look for a carbon version
3: Look for classic version

Not sure how we can get around the grey-out "change default" button though. Maybe OS X can respect creator/type relations to apps until it's changed via that button...otherwise, what's the point of the button?!

A problem with the first option in the Get Info box ("Open this document with") is that if you select a bunch of documents it works fine only if they're all set to open with the same application to start with. Very rarely can you "select all" and then Get Info and be able to change them all to the same app. At this point, it should ignore any prior relation...or should list ALL prior relations as possible alternative applications.

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Just face it - some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue!

The order OS X needs to use is:[list=1]
Look for a cocoa version of the desired application
Look for a carbon version
Look for classic version[/list=a]

Geobunny's observation is apt. Maybe this was just an oversight on Apple's part, while they were trying to preserve backward-compatibility with Classic, but it is an annoying bug/feature.

Sounds like it's common (and remediable) enough that we'd do well to send Apple some feedback about it. I am going to do so right now, in fact, and would urge everyone else to do the same.

[yadda_yadda_yadda]

Here are the steps to a SimpleText-free life:

- Delete or archive every copy of SimpleText imaginable on your Mac.
- Right-click a simpletext file, choose to open all files of that type with TextEdit.

Problem solved... no SimpleText, carbon or classic.

[FlaSheridn]

Originally posted by ppmax:
another solution is to delete or uninstall os 9. im trying to see how much i can rely on X alone and have removed 9 from my system.
ppmax

Hmm, is there a slightly less drastic solution? Has anyone figured out how to disable the automatic starting of Classic?