IC: Is it the right choice?

Subject: IC: Is it the right choice?
From: "Andy O'Meara" <email@hidden>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 13:19:43 -0500

Hiya.... I'm the freeware developer of G-Force and WhiteCap, two visual plugins for SoundJam, Winamp, and other audio players. Since my stuff is cross platform, I've decided to go the direction of html docs (vs. using the help system of a given OS). After looking into it, it seems the best choice to launch a local MacOS file is via InternetConfig. However, it seems there's a few concerns:
- Compatibility
- Are there a significant percent of pre 8.6 Macs (ie, Macs w/o IC)?
- What percent of Macs that do have IC actually have valid info entered? I know I never bothered until applications actually started using it (ie, not too long ago).
- IC and local html files
- What the accepted/suggested way to get IC to the file? (IC accepts pathnames, not specs, so it's not clear how to guaruntee it'll find the file on all machines, etc).
- If IC isn't the best choice, I'd love to use the MacOS service that's responsible for handling URLs that are dragged-and-dropped onto the destop. (drag the URL str from your browser to your desktop and you'll be able to click you way back to the URL).
- It seems like a useful MacOS service, but it's no clear whatsoever how to use it. The sampler code I've found that freaking just opens a doc given a spec is a 100+ lines (it looks for a running process thant can handle it, then looks on its resident volume for the creator app spec, then all local volumes, then mounted volumes--how awkward, lengthy, and unclean!!). Btw, that didn't even handle the files made by the drag-and-dropped URLs.

I'd probably be less inquisitive if the Appl dev search wasn't broken--try searching for anything. It's been toast for a day now, but hopefully they'll have it fixed soon. In the mean time, a URL to any IC pages on the dev site that has beaucoup info could be useful.

Thanks for the time.

Andy O'Meara
http://www.55ware.com/

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