Re: Need for a creator code?

FROM : Rainer Brockerhoff
DATE : Wed Apr 02 01:44:19 2008

At 15:21 -0700 01/04/08, <email_removed> wrote:
>From: Andrew Farmer <<email_removed>>
>References: <<email_removed>>
>In-Reply-To: <<email_removed>>
>Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 13:26:58 -0700
>Message-ID: <<email_removed>>
>
>On 01 Apr 08, at 12:59, Marc Respass wrote:

>>I haven't registered for a creator code since System 7.5. Apple has information and registration page (http://developer.apple.com/datatype/index.html) about it but no indication if it's actually still required. Can anyone tell me if it is still required or maybe point me at the right information?

>
>Type and creator codes have been deprecated since Tiger, which introduced UTIs. (Maybe even longer; I'm not sure.) Either way, you can safely forget they ever existed.


Type and Creator codes are alive and well in 10.5.x, and I haven't seen any mention that they're deprecated.

They're still used by LaunchServices to bind documents to applications. UTIs haven't substituted them, mostly because there's no field in HFS+ that directly defines a UTI for a specific file; instead the UTI is deduced from type, creator and extension (perhaps also from file contents in some cases).

What actually happens is that file type is checked first, then file extension, then file creator. LaunchServices matches them, in that order, to registered applications. The same metadata are also used to produce UTIs for that file, which are also used for matching.

It's still useful to register a creator code for your application if you have documents/files that have no extensions (in that case, also use a type), or that have some otherwise common extension, but still need to show your app's document icon. All-lowercase code are reserved.

There used to be some problems with using codes that contained MacRoman characters with the high bit set - the codes use MacRoman but the PkgInfo files (which are mostly obsolete these days) used UTF8. I suppose that should work now, although I haven't checked.

Registering a code is much faster now - you get a response within minutes, instead of the week it used to take in the System 7 days.

--
Rainer Brockerhoff  <<email_removed>>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"In the affairs of others even fools are wise
In their own business even sages err."
Weblog: http://www.brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php