The Get Info Window

No ideas for a 'batch' change other than reversing the steps so that PhotoShop becomes the default again. Unfortunately, the file association mechanism in Tiger isn't as trouble-free as the old OS method, in part because it tries to deal with both the old type/creator associations from the old OS & the UNIX/DOS/Windows ones based on file extension postfixes.

Files that lack type/creator info (which takes precedence) rely on the extension, & it seems that unless there is type/creator info that says otherwise, there can be only one 'creator' app associated with a given extension.

You can add type/creator info to a file, for instance with a third party utility like FileWIZ, as a workaround, but you must know the appropriate 4 character values for each, & I don't know of any way to do this other than manually, on a file-by-file basis.

From some quick checks, it appears some, but not all, OS X apps have a "CFBundleSignature" entry in their info.plist (which you can see by showing their package contents & opening the info.plist with Property List Editor) that cooresponds to the old 'creator' code. For example, the Acrobat Reader entry is "CARO." Any .pdf files I set with FileWIZ to creator code "CARO" & type code " PDF" (note the space) are associated with Acrobat Reader, even if all other .pdf files open in Preview by default.

Thus, my system recognizes two kinds of pdfs, "PDF Document" & "Adobe PDF Document," & treats each as distinct from the other.

Maybe you can do something similar, but I'm afraid you will have to do it one file at a time.

Just to add a bit to the above:

The application SuperGetInfo from Bare Bones Software will not only show you the type and creator code, but allow you to change them, or add them if they are not present.

This AppleScript will show you the type/creator code:

on run
activate
choose file with prompt "Get information for which file:"
copy (info for the result) to fileInfoRecord
tell fileInfoRecord
copy "File Name: " & name & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "Created: " & creation date & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "Modified: " & modification date & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "Size: " & (size as integer) & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "File Creator: " & file creator & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "File Type: " & file type & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "Kind: " & kind & return to resultStr
copy resultStr & "Version: " & long version to resultStr
end tell
display dialog resultStr buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
end run

Copy into ScriptEditor, click Compile, and save it as an application.

As for getting the whole Photoshop/Illustrator eps thing straightened out after you have done some dinking around with files and GetInfo and apply to all, well, that can be tricky! It may be necessary to reset the whole of LaunchServices back to the default state.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

FileWiz also allows changing/adding type & creator codes ... & it is freeware. It has a nice drag & drop interface, an editable popup list of codes, & even a handy, compact comparison mode so you can change one file's codes to match the other.

Did I mention that it's free? 🙂

R C-R wrote:

"Files that lack type/creator info (which takes precedence) rely on the extension, & it seems that unless there is type/creator info that says otherwise, there can be only one 'creator' app associated with a given extension."

FYI: With Tiger, Type/Creator is now further down on the precedence list than extension. The actual scheme by which a default application is selected is described in the "Determining the Preferred Application" section of the "Launch Services Concepts" chapter of the Apple Developer Connection document Launch Services Concepts and Tasks.

re: The topic at hand:

When one saves a file, it may still have an extension. If "Hide Extension" is selected, the file may still have an extension (depends on how the app handles it), it's just simply hidden in Finder. Some apps always add an extension, even if one isn't specified. Other apps only add the extension if its specified. I've even seen some apps where if you type "filename.ext" and save the file, it's saved as "filename.ext.app specifiedextension" but if you have "Hide Extensions" enabled in Finder, then you don't know the actual extension it assigned. Re: extensions, some apps are smarter than others, and some are too smart for their own good. 😉

User-specified bindings (associating a document with an application) always have highest precedence. If one selects an EPS file and then employs Get Info > Open With > select application > Change All, then every EPS file will open in the selected application as one has created a user-specified binding. "Change All" should be used carefully, particularly with suites like the Adobe suite where multiple apps can open the same type of document and one prefers to do things like:

• open EPS files created in Illustrator in Illustrator.

• open EPS files saved in Photoshop in Photoshop.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

FYI: With Tiger, Type/Creator is now further
down on the precedence list than extension.

I don't think so, both from what the "Preferred Application for Document Files" section of the reference & personal experience tells me. In that 'preferred' section of the doc, while it lists extensions first as a criteria, it doesn't say anything about precedence if more than one criteria apply except in step 4:

"4. If more than one application has been found as a result of steps 2–3, apply the following criteria in the order shown:

a. If the document carries a four-character creator signature (or if one has been specified as a parameter), give preference to any application that claims to accept documents with that signature (typically the application to which the signature belongs)."

Admittedly, it is ambiguous because extensions don't appear at all in the sublist, but since steps 2 & 3 refer to extension & type/creator codes, it seems to be saying what I observe in practice: type/creator "wins" over anything except user-specified bindings.

If it did not, I don't see how I could see the observed behavior: PDF files with identical extensions & no user definded bindings (by me, anyway) still bind to two different apps. I also assume that utilities like FileWiz don't do anything to specify a user binding, yet the 'rebinding' for any file with no file/type code is immediate when one is added, regardless of the extension, which would be more indication that this interpretation of the dev doc is the right one.

What do you think?

What's not documented in that section is the shift that's been ongoing away from Type/Creator entirely. Apple has been trying to get away from that legacy method since Jaguar, looking for developers to favor extensions or MIME types, as appropriate. If you've got current applications, they're more likely populating the Launch Services database with the extensions or MIME types they open. Some still do it both ways, which may explain, at least in part, what you described re: your PDFs. But one may have documents that carry a creator code from an old version of an app, where the new version now only specifies an extension. How different developers handle backwards compatibility is up to them.

The real ambiguity is where it states:

"If two or more candidate applications remain after all of the foregoing criteria have been applied, Launch Services chooses one of the remaining applications in an unspecified manner."

Reminds me of that cartoon to two scientists at a blackboard covered with equations. In the middle of an equation one has written "Then a miracle happens" and the equations continue. 😉

The new push is to UTIs ( Uniform Type Identifiers) which is a whole other model entirely, intended to rationalize all the issues between Type/Creator, extensions, and MIME types. It's going to be a while before developers adopt that universally.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Frankly, I'm skeptical that UTI's will end the confusion, or replace all the older methods, at least in my lifetime. They suffer from the same problem that the type/creator method did: far better & more flexible than anything that came before but not directly compatible with the inferior but more popular methods used by other OSes.

When my attachments from Windows users start arriving with UTI tags, I'll get excited about them. Until then, I'll still be trying hacks like adding type/creator codes to help the OS figure out what app I want my various docs to open with.

BTW, even most current Apple apps (including most with UTI declarations) still include CFBundleSignature key values, so it isn't only old versions that honor creator codes. Even a brand new app like Google Earth has one ("Erth").

For instance, I just convinced the OS that a text doc created in TextEdit, complete with an .rtf extension, was an iChat transcript document by adding a type code of "chat" & a creator code of "fez!" to it with FileWiz. Both codes were taken from the iChat info.plist key table. I then used the same technique to convince the OS it was a Chess.app file of type moves ("cpgn" & "mbch"), & various other things.

Initially, only the icon & kind changed to the owner app while Finder's Get Info still reported it would open with TextEdit, but actually opening it launched the new creator app ... which of course had no idea what to do with it! ... & reset the remaining info to match the new creator. Adding or removing the .rtf extension to the file had no effect at all.

Glad to hear you sorted things out. Just remember not to use that "Change All..." button unless you really want to change all! 🙂

You're most welcome. Glad to help.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X