Mac Finder API (or something) required

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Y. J. Chun - 02 Jan 2006 23:12 GMT

Hello.

I need something like finder plugin to make Macosx Finder to navigate
my own file system (zip file system?)

In Windows XP, when you double click zip files, you can explore the
contents of the zip files without 'mounting' really. It is just windows
explorer feature showing the zip file contents. That's what I want to
do with Mac Finder.

I want to make mac finder to show zip file contents and you can just do
anything you would do with ordinary files in Finder.

I thought two method for this. First is to mount and unmount the zip
file system when you double click the zip file and closing finder
window in the Finder. But mounting is too much more than what I want.

Second is just like Windows XP's explorer, show the zip file contents
only to Finder window. This would be possible if there's an Finder
Plugin or something to modify Finder's behavior such as 'browsing file
contents', 'opening file', 'getting file attributes', etc...

Either such an API does not exist or my information searching technic
is not good, I couldn't find how to do that.

If anyone have an idea, please help me.
Thanks.

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Simon Slavin - 05 Jan 2006 23:49 GMT

On 02/01/2006, Y. J. Chun wrote in message
<1136243563.986395.291200@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>:

> I need something like finder plugin to make Macosx Finder to navigate
> my own file system (zip file system?)

Under Mac OS X you wouldn't use a Finder plugin to do this, you'd supply
File System support for your file system. This would allow any program
that handles files to use your 'zip file system'. The effect would be
similar to the support for Disk Images: you can mount a file as a 'zip
image' and then manipulate it If you take a look in

/System/Library/Filesystems/

you'll see which file systems are supported by your installation of OS X.

You should read

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgrammin
g/Filesystem/chapter_12_section_1.html

http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1242.html

The good news is that filesystems are part of Darwin which is Open Source,
so you can see examples of the existing file system support source code.
The bad news is that the VFS API is changing and not documented yet:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgrammin
g/Filesystem/chapter_12_section_3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-
CH215-TPXREF102

Simon.

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Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / January 2006

Mac Finder API (or something) required