To save a PDF file to be opened in the default PDF application set in the system's preferences, use the creator signature for an unknown application, '?': set the fileType to '?PDF ' So for example, to save a PDF file assigned to be opened in Adobe Reader use set the fileType to 'CAROPDF ' The syntax is: set the fileType to creator & typeĬreator & type is an eight-character string composed of a four-character creator signature followed by a four-character file type. When writing files to the local file system with LiveCode on Mac systems, it is a good idea to first set the fileType global property, so that the OS will know what applications can open it. In any event, no harm is done by setting this property in your LiveCode projects. However, setting a filetype in LiveCode can still be useful for providing support for OS X legacy systems. Note: Beginning with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, creator codes are ignored by OS X, and have been superseded internally by Apple's Uniform Type Identifier scheme. In addition, Mac OS X can still recognize and match files to applications using file types and creator signatures. When Mac OS X came along it had the ability to determine appropriate applications for launching files by looking at the file's extension, as had been done in the DOS, UNIX and Windows world for years. So many different applications could open TEXT files, but very few could open WDBN files. Application writers could tell their applications which types of files it could open. For example, plain text files were type 'TEXT' and MS Word documents were 'WDBN'.

Similarly, every file could have a file type code assigned to it.

The OS maintained a database of which creator codes matched which applications, so that when the user double-clicked a file, the OS would look up the creator code in its database and launch the proper application.

A unique creator signature was assigned to every application and any file could store a creator code in its resource fork. The Mac Classic operating system used four-character codes to keep track of what application should be used to open specific files and what type of files applications could open. (For use with the fileType and stackFileType properties)īy Devin Asay Creator Signatures and File Types Office of Digital Humanities Back BYU LiveCode Lessons Gateway Mac Creator Signature and File Types in Revolution/LiveCode

Word for mac file extension