Re: While we're on the subject of DMG's for software distribution...
Re: While we're on the subject of DMG's for software distribution...
- Subject: Re: While we're on the subject of DMG's for software distribution...
- From: "Kyle Sluder" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 02:38:32 -0400
On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 1:34 AM, Peter N Lewis <email@hidden> wrote:
> 1 Put the PDFs in the Resources folder in the app, and add Help menu entries
> to display them.
Pro Tools does this. It's incredibly frustrating to have to launch
the app just to get at the documentation. I happen to know that you
can open the app bundle, but who is to expect that a normal user will
know?
> 2a Put the Plug-Ins folder in the Contents folder in the app and use it from
> there; OR
This makes sense, because you can then use -[NSBundle
builtInPlugInsPath] to get to them.
> 2b Put the Plug-Ins folder in the Resources folder, and on launch copy it in
> to ~/Library/Application Support/Your App Name/Plug-Ins and use it there.
This isn't helpful to the user if they want to move or copy the
application. The OS does a good job of presenting the user the
appearance of a monolithic application object. Granted, your plug-in
might rely on code that gets installed elsewhere, so this might not
matter. But, for example, I expect that when I add Dreamweaver
plugins, like the very important updated WebDAV plugin bundle, that I
can move the app around and not lose it.
Better yet, search not only in the bundle but also in a few other
sensible locations.
> 3 Forget about the dmg and use .zip instead. There is no real reason to use
> dmg except for the pretty background, and it adds confusion to the users who
> run it from within the disk image and don't understand why it then
> disappears when they log out. We switcher from .dmg to .zip and (like other
> developers) got zero comments about the change.
ZIP files don't get the special treatment Internet-enabled DMGs do.
For one, if your Internet-enabled DMG only contains your app bundle,
Safari will unwrap the executable and throw away the DMG. Also, it is
a very convenient wrapper for holding things like documentation,
uninstallers, etc. I can also very easily burn a CD from the DMG --
very important as I found out when I accidentally trashed my network's
repository of software.
> BTW, would someone please standardize on the spelling and capitalization of
> "Plug-Ins"?! It is spelled
>
> Plug-Ins
> Plug-ins
> PlugIns
> Plugins
According to the documentation
(http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/LoadingCode/Tasks/LoadingBundles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001273-99488-BAJFBAJB),
PlugIns is correct. Plug-ins is used as a fallback.
--Kyle Sluder
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