Find a .txt file click it select it (click on it), press command + i, on the resulting info panel, choose textmate from the drop down menu, also push the Change All... button to make this change the new default for all .txt files. From now on double clicking a .txt file opens it in TextMate. (this is a basic mac trick that can be used to set the default app for any file extension--enjoy) Tim

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Scott Haneda talklists@newgeo.com wrote:

In case you can not find a solution... Sometimes you can force a reset of default apps. Zip up textedit and delete the original.

Now open your file. It should open in tm. If not, zip the next app. Eventually you get to a point where the files open in your desired app.

From there just restore your zipped apps. Hell, may not hurt to trash textedit, though it comes in handy for poking at pesky Word files.

-- Scott Iphone says hello.

On Apr 3, 2009, at 9:38 PM, Bill Paxton paxton@kitp.ucsb.edu wrote:

...

Hello,

How can I get 10.5.6 to use TextMate as the default application to open text files instead of using TextEdit?

For example, if I do the following, I'd like the new file to open in TextMate:

grep 'test' *.c > newfile open newfile

Currently, this opens in TextEdit (ugh).

For files with an extension, I can get the system to use TextMate for all files with that extension. But I'd like something that works automatically for files without extensions (like "newfile" in the example).

Also while it works to use "get info" to set the "open with" application for an existing file, when I do "Change All..." to use TextMate, I get the following error:

An error occurred while changing the application that    open "newfile" because not enough information is    available.

I'm using Version 1.5.8 (1498).

Thanks, Bill Paxton

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HI Scott,

Thanks for the suggestion. However rather than eventually getting to a point where it opens in tm, it gets to a point where it just won't open the file in anything! It brings up this error when I do "open" or when I double click on a newly created file without an extension.

The document "newfile" could not be opened. Help Viewer cannot open files of this type.

If I use "get info" to set the application for the file, it does now list tm. But in spite of that, double clicking the file or doing 'open' in terminal both give the error mentioned above.

Now the only way I can open the file is by using the Open command in tm or by doing "Open with" using the right button on the mouse.

Sigh.... This all worked fine on 10.4, but Apple has "improved" things.

--Bill

On Apr 3, 2009, at 10:05 PM, Scott Haneda wrote:

In case you can not find a solution... Sometimes you can force a reset of default apps. Zip up textedit and delete the original.

Now open your file. It should open in tm. If not, zip the next app. Eventually you get to a point where the files open in your desired app.

From there just restore your zipped apps. Hell, may not hurt to trash textedit, though it comes in handy for poking at pesky Word files.

-- Scott Iphone says hello.

Hi Tommy,

On Apr 4, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Tommy Nordgren wrote:

in your bash init file, create create an alias for : open -a TextMate (or use the command open -a TextMate FileName

Excellent suggestion -- that takes care of opening from the command line, but now what about double click open? That still fails.

Thanks, Bill

Hi,

On Apr 4, 2009, at 10:00 AM, Joseph Pecoraro wrote:

...

But now what about double click open? That still fails.

I normally drag and drop the file onto the TextMate icon in the Dock. That is probably not what you're looking for, but its what I've been doing for a while now.

Thanks -- that's better than using the right button "Open with" method.

But can it really be impossible to make double click work correctly?

But it is hard to believe that Apple has failed to provide a way to direct double clicks to the desired application for new files without extensions. The amazing thing is that the new files now automatically get TextMate as the "Open with" application for Get Info, but double click and command line open still open them with something else (TeXShop in my case).

--Bill

Hi,

Thanks for the pointer to that thread.

Turns out I had found RCdefaultApp independently. And even after setting everything I could find to "TextMate", I'm still having the problem. Even the UTI public.data setting and application/octet-stream setting are now for TextMate, but double-clicks go elsewhere. Where they go seems to change -- before it was TeXShop, but now after a restart they are going to GraphicConverter!

--Bill

On Apr 4, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Joseph Pecoraro wrote:

It seems like somebody got this to work in October 2008 (on Leopard). http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=79991

He used an application RCdefaultApp to change the public.data UTI to be TextMate instead of TextEdit.

Quote: "A few hours later, after reading up on UTIs, I looked through the list of public.* utis in RCdefaultApp and I found the UTI public.data was set to textedit-- i set it to textmate, and all my extensionless text files seem to open properly now."

Here is a link to RCdefaultApp: http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/

Let me know how it works out.

Bill Paxton-2 wrote:

Hello,

How can I get 10.5.6 to use TextMate as the default application to open text files instead of using TextEdit?

For example, if I do the following, I'd like the new file to open in TextMate:

grep 'test' *.c > newfile open newfile

Currently, this opens in TextEdit (ugh).

For files with an extension, I can get the system to use TextMate for all files with that extension. But I'd like something that works automatically for files without extensions (like "newfile" in the example).

Also while it works to use "get info" to set the "open with" application for an existing file, when I do "Change All..." to use TextMate, I get the following error:

An error occurred while changing the application that open "newfile" because not enough information is available.

I'm using Version 1.5.8 (1498).

Thanks, Bill Paxton

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textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate

I think that there is a much easy solution: alias tm="open -a /Applications/TextMate.app" in your .bash_profile and you're done (if I understood correctly)

The more I read this, the more it is becoming massively clear, this is not a textmate issue at all. You are on 10.5.6, which is known to work, for what appears to be the better majority of users.

You have something strange going on with your system. While there is a chance TM is making it more apparent, file opening, either by drag and drop or double click etc, are easily controlled by Mac OS X.

Curious what happens if you select a file and press command-O on the keyboard, or command-downarrow.

At this point, I suggest you crete a new user account in OS X, login to that account, and see if that solves it. If that solved it, you know it is a preference issue, a preference pane, or some input manager or other installed item.

You can start picking around in your regular user folder to try to solve it, which is not all that bad. Move everything out of ~/Library/ Preferences, logout, login, see if that solves it. Put a handful of the prefs back in, log out, log in, see if the problem comes back. Rinse and repeat until you have solved it.

If it is not user setting related, it is higher up in the preferences chain of how OS X handles preferences. At this point, I would just clean reinstall and rebuild my system from scratch. Takes me a few hours to do so and be working, and then small fine tunes over the course of the next few weeks, but I have a known clean machine.

On Apr 4, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Bill Paxton wrote:

Hi Andrea,

Thanks -- the alias indeed takes care of the command line part of the problem. But I'd like to be able to double click on the files too. And so far, nothing has fixed that.

The Finder seems to have something against TextMate! It refuses to open files with it even when Get Info lists tm as the "Open with" application.

Actually, the Finder doesn't really hate TextMate -- it just seems to get confused when trying to find it in the Applications folder and picks someother app instead.

Here's an example:

1. create a new extensionless file echo 'ff' > newfile

2. select and Get Info for newfile. It says Open with: TextMate.app

3. double click newfile. Finder tries to open it with an old version of GraphicConverter!

Move the old GraphicConverter to trash and try again. This time I get the following message:

You can't open this document because the application "TextMate.app" is in the Trash.

So -- the Finder thinks that the old GraphicConverter is TextMate. The real TextMate.app is sitting in Applications still.

After doing a Restart, double click on newfile now causes it to open in TeXShop! The Finder has picked up a different app to use in place of TextMate.

-- Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *

On Apr 4, 2009, at 6:42 PM, Bill Paxton wrote:

Hi Tommy,

On Apr 4, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Tommy Nordgren wrote:

...

in your bash init file, create create an alias for : open -a TextMate (or use the command open -a TextMate FileName

Excellent suggestion -- that takes care of opening from the command line, but now what about double click open? That still fails.

Thanks, Bill

You might file an enhancement request, to add a "Open In TextMate" Cocoa Service.

------------------------------------------------------ "Home is not where you are born, but where your heart finds peace" - Tommy Nordgren, "The dying old crone" tommy.nordgren@comhem.se

On 2009-Apr-4, at 12:38 AM, Bill Paxton wrote:

For files with an extension, I can get the system to use TextMate for all files with that extension. But I'd like something that works automatically for files without extensions (like "newfile" in the example).

Would you want `/bin/ls` to open in TextMate? Not that anyone would try that particular example, but there are plenty of things in my home directory (let alone the entire system) without extensions that shouldn't open in a text editor. A blind default isn't the answer.

On 2009-Apr-5, at 10:13 AM, John Laudun wrote:

As many people have pointed out, this is indeed a Finder problem, but it makes it no less frustrating for users who do not wish to have extensions on text files. (In the old days, wasn't that what the resource fork was for? And wasn't the promise of the modern OSes to dispense with the file extension system?)

As far as I can tell, most modern OSes are perfectly happy sticking with the crappy "file type as part of the file name" technique. Mac OS X is the only one I know if that promised to fix this. My understanding is that, as of 10.5 (maybe it was even 10.4), UTI is supposed to be "the way" to specify file type, while extensions and other things are a fallback. I've always been content to just drag things to the TextMate Dock icon or use Quicksilver to "open with", but this thread made me look into it a little.

Based on the theory that UTI is authoritative, the correct way to handle this is to just set the UTI for text files with no extension to "public.plain-text", but in practice, it looks like the only way to change the UTI is to change the extension. What the hell is the point of that? (There are some special cases, like if you set an extensionless file to executable, the UTI becomes "public.unix- executable".) I think we're stuck until there becomes a straightforward way to control UTI. The alternative is to treat all extensionless files the same. The wrongness of that far outweighs any convenience.

For the record, according to Allan, I am one of about three people that didn't like TextMate claiming all extensionless files under 10.4, while there were about 3 bajillion people that didn't care what was appropriate or what made sense as long as they could click click click on stuff. :)

On 2009-Apr-5, at 11:46 PM, Adam Bryzak wrote:

While it wouldn't make sense for all extension-less files to open in TextMate, it would to be able to change the default for files that would normally open in TextEdit when double clicked to instead open in another application.

I agree. The "get info" panel should let you alter the UTI (even if it doesn't tell you that's what it's doing) and you should be able to assign a default application by UTI somehow.

This would not affect executable files as their default is to open using Tterminal.

No it wouldn't, but the work-around TextMate uses (that "works" in 10.4, but thankfully not in 10.5) does affect executable files. It makes the Finder turn them all into "generic files". That's the kind of thing I object to. (I actually had a patch that I applied to TextMate's Info.plist with every new release to fix this behavior under 10.4.)

I mostly run into this issue with open source software when opening README, LICENSE, NOTICE, etc. files, which I now drag onto the dock to open.

I usually do too, though now that I think about it, I'm not sure why. If you're just reading the file (not editing) and there's no syntax highlighting to make reading easier, maybe TextEdit is enough.

Funny, I was trying to get rid of TextEdit when double clicking on a extension-less file (using the compress TextEdit, then compress OpenOffice, etc. technique), when I finally got to the same issue:

The document "newfile" could not be opened. Help Viewer cannot open files of this type.

Argh!

This is really useful for makefiles...

Best regards, Mathieu

___________________________________________

Mathieu Godart

Skype: mathieu_godart MSN: mathieu_godart@hotmail.com

ASIC Integration Manager Coolsand Technologies ___________________________________________

Le 5 avr. 09 à 17:40, Bill Paxton a écrit :

On Apr 5, 2009, at 12:39 AM, Scott Haneda wrote:

...

The more I read this, the more it is becoming massively clear, this is not a textmate issue at all. You are on 10.5.6, which is known to work, for what appears to be the better majority of users.

So, just to confirm, you have no problem with double clicking extensionless files and getting them the open with tm? If so, that's encouraging at least.

...

You have something strange going on with your system.

Amen to that! BTW: I just moved from 10.4 where all this worked fine to 10.5 where things have been bad from the beginning.

...

While there is a chance TM is making it more apparent, file opening, either by drag and drop or double click etc, are easily controlled by Mac OS X.

Curious what happens if you select a file and press command-O on the keyboard,

same result as double click. opens in wrong app.

...

or command-downarrow.

ditto.

...

At this point, I suggest you crete a new user account in OS X, login to that account, and see if that solves it.

Good idea.

New user account -- but same machine, so same Applications folder.

Here's what I did to check things.

Open TM. Create a new file using Save as. Quit TM.

Double click the new file. Get this error:

The document "newfile" could not be opened. Help Viewer cannot open files of this type.

I removed TM from Applications, download a new copy, put that in Applications, tried again, and got the same error.

--Bill

P.S. Thanks to John Laudun for expressing sympathy!

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Joseph Pecoraro wrote:

...

But now what about double click open? That still fails.

I normally drag and drop the file onto the TextMate icon in the Dock.

My situation is a bit worse, and I'm probably doing something wrong somewhere: I have my sources on an NFS volume (thanks, I know that's kind of semi-wrong to do, but that wasn't my choice), and whenever I check out something (and I believe also sometimes when updating), my Makefile(s) are set to open with TextEdit.

Until I fix that in the Finder, I can still open them in tm – unless they are included in an opened project! For some strange reason, I cannot convince tm to open a Makefile that is included in a project, but the OS believes should be opened in TextEdit. Calling mate on this Makefile opens the project, but not the Makefile. tm itself offers me to open it in TextEdit (thanks, I don't want to), but not to open it itself. “Treat as text” is greyed out for this file.

Christopher

Allan Odgaard wrote:

Your Makefiles are likely not valid UTF-8, i.e. saved using another encoding and containing non-ASCII.

Right. They are pretty much legacy code and stored in latin 1. I'll check if anyone has problems with removing the non-ASCII characters, they are only in the comments anyway.

Still, it's strange that 'mate Makefile' opens the file if and only if no project including the file is open.

Christopher