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Re: Filter Service

On Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 01:06 PM, Ryuichi MIZUNO wrote:
Hi list,

Hi yourself! :)

Is Filter Service still available on MacOSX 10.2.6 ?
/Developer/Examples/AppKit/SimpleImageFilter does not seem to work well.
I guess NSUnixStdio type filter service is currently/temporarilly
not supported, right ?

No, I recently successfully implemented two types of filters under 10.2.6 to interface with a vast image conversion library (ImageMagick). One that used IM's own conversion program "convert" via an NSUnixStdio input filter, and another that used the IM library itself to convert images as a standard NSFilter service.

However, I thought I was doing things completely wrong as well, and for similar reasons (that is, I also did everything the documentation said, and it appeared not to work), until I realized just how limited the scope of image filters really is. It only applies for things that use the pasteboard for reading in images, and I _think_ only Cocoa applications at that!

Preview won't use it when opening files, the Finder won't use it when displaying the file preview, and the quicktime reader doesn't use it, and NSImage doesn't utilize filter services when reading files. Only things that use the pasteboard, like, for instance, dragging image files to an NSImageView (or any drag acceptor that accepts images), or if you just happen to go through the extra motions to have NSImage pass file names through the pasteboard (no apps do, naturally). I was crushed at how useless it was, frankly.

If you want an image filter to be of wide use, the best course would perhaps to write a quicktime component, in particular a graphics importer. I soon afterward looked at something called the ElectricImageComponent, some sample code available from

http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/

but one look at the code made me loose interest right away ... it was a small personal project that I didn't feel like suffering for. Your needs may be more pressing, however.

Nothing you say suggests you have done anything wrong, except that apps that offer services should be put in the /Applications folder.
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References: 
 >Filter Service (From: Ryuichi MIZUNO <email@hidden>)



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