[TxMt] Re: how can I make TextMate the default editor for text files on 10.5.6

[Rob McBroom]

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. :)

-- 
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>