Can't double-click rebol scripts on iMac

handling tasks on my iMac -- is that Rebol is not native to each OS. An instance of Rebol has to be running in order to execute the .r scripts -- or am I missing something?

the desktop. Same with some apps I'm working on for windows -- Rebol has to be running to launch the apps.

There has to be an association in the operating system between files with the extension ".r" and the Rebol interpreter. With this association, the iMac operating system will automatically launch Rebol and "give it" the file that's been double clicked on. The association is usually created when Rebol/View is installed, but not for Rebol/Core. Perhaps you could try installing Rebol/View on your iMac? I hope that helps! Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://valley.150m.com/

No. You're describing the Visual CP/M method, not the standard MacOS mechanism. With MacOS, the directory entry of each file has two attributes "creator" and "file type" which are normally set by the application that creates the file. The "creator" attribute tells which application to launch when the file is double-clicked (usually the creating application itself), and the "file type" allows an application to have multiple "flavors" of documents (e.g. end-user documents vs. read-only templates) that it treats differently. Doing this with a one-to-three-letter suffix on the file name itself is a very fragile substitute used by some big company in Redmond, based on legacy designs going back at least to the early 1970's. It's very easy for the user to change the suffix accidentally while renaming a file, and then the relationship is broken.

I don't know what OS is running on Sabin's system, but View is not yet available for MacOS/X; it's been marked "pending" on the RT web site for a long time. I've been watching for it, as my main laptop these days is an iBook running OS/X. I'm thoroughly happy with it except for the fact that I'm excluded from doing anything in View. I normally work on a combination of MacOS, w2k, w95, Solaris, and a little HP-U/X, so I try to avoid becoming dependent on anything that I can't use across all platforms. -jn- -- ; Joel Neely joeldotneelyatfedexdotcom REBOL [] do [ do func [s] [ foreach [a b] s [prin b] ] sort/skip do function [s] [t] [ t: "" foreach [a b] s [repend t [b a]] t ] { | e s m!zauafBpcvekexEohthjJakwLrngohOqrlryRnsctdtiub} 2 ]

And I think Mac OS should look at AmigaOS tooltypes and datatypes, which recognize file under internal structure etc. :-) No, really - just kidding - so what would Rebol would have to do, to support MacOS properly? -pekr-

Mac files are usually exchanged across the 'Net using a tool such as Stuffit, which creates a single data file containing all of the necessary components: 1) data fork 2) resource fork 3) creator code 4) file type code and can reconstitute them when the file is "unstuffed" on the receiving side. Since "stuffing" a file also compresses it, the whole process is a net win and just as painless as using gzip on Unix.

I believe you've hit the correct explanation. It's bitterly ironic that a company that has turned "innovation" into a bit of newspeak marketing jargon actually stifles innovation by hanging on to seriously outdated concepts and by attempting to kill off any attempt at legitimate competition. -jn-

And, of course, before Stuffit there was BinHex...

I assume your talking about the scenario where a "developer" writes a script and gives it to a "user" who is expected to double-click on it to run as needed but not expected to modify the content of the script file. I'm running OS/X on my iBook, so I don't have ready access to try an experiment on older (non-X) MacOS versions. The key questions would be: 1) What is the creator/application code for REBOL/Core? 2) Is there a different creator/application code for /View? 3) If someone uses a utility to change the creator code for a file of type "TEXT" from whatever editor created it to the creator code for /Core or /View, will REBOL (either version) know to DO that file once launched? 4) If REBOL (either /View or /Core) creates a file, what creator and type codes will the directory contain for that file? If anyone has ready access to a non-X MacOS with a utility such as BBEdit (which can manipulate creator/type codes), the above could be answered fairly quickly. If the answer to (3) is "Yes", and the answer to (4) is that the creator is set to the appropriate version of REBOL and the type is left as something else that REBOL will accept per question (3) then a REBOL one-liner could be written to a) read a specified text file (assumed to be a script) b) write it to another name (implicitly marking it with REBOL as the creator) and the output would cause REBOL to launch and run when double- clicked. Needless to say, all of this is speculative, contingent, and disclaimered six ways from Sunday... ;-) -jn-

Know only oold macs. there each file knows its programm, there is no distinction by type. a normal web-server does not tell this special info. but if you do [write %file.r read %file.r] rebol adds this information afaik. so maybe a script to search directories and patch *.r-scripts could help. also rebol has special modes to access mac-forks and should be able to set the start-programm explicitely. but then modern macs should have settings somewhere how to associate mime-types/file-extensions from foreign systems? find and change them..

-volker

Both creator and type information have been in the MacOS file system at least since the mid-80's, if not from the very beginning. I did Mac development in that time frame (e.g., GUI-driven barcode label printing software), and used the file type distinction (e.g., to handle label design files differently from content data files). As I mentioned earlier in this thread, this information was not exposed to the end user directly. However, it was detectable, e.g. when MacWrite saved a document as "TEXT" versus native MacWrite format, a different icon was used for the document. -jn- -- ; Joel Neely joeldotneelyatfedexdotcom REBOL [] do [ do func [s] [ foreach [a b] s [prin b] ] sort/skip do function [s] [t] [ t: "" foreach [a b] s [repend t [b a]] t ] { | e s m!zauafBpcvekexEohthjJakwLrngohOqrlryRnsctdtiub} 2 ]

registered ??? You have to /ask/ Apple to have a file-type registered just so the files can be launched from an icon??? I've misunderstood here, right?

-- Carl Read

-- striving to be unlike gregor samsa : [sabin--onegecko--com] : www.onegecko.com

But REBOL doesn't create the files - Joe ABC did on the other side of the planet using a text-editor on OS XYZ. Is there no way to just select a text-file and give it a non-text creator/type so its application can be whatever you want?

Maybe all true. But why is it that my PC-using friends don't seem to have had any trouble setting up Windows to launch REBOL scripts with just a click on the scripts' icons while the Mac user with his better OS can't? -- Carl Read