John M McIntosh wrote:
> 
> >OS X actually comes close to handling this reasonably... if you
> >double-click on the raw downloaded .image icon, it will prompt you with
> >a dialog to select an application to run.  So, we should be able to
> >select the appropriate VM from this dialog, and all will be well, right?
> >  Wrong, it only seems to let you select an application with the
> >appropriate matching file type (which the VM does not match), and the
> >dialog doesn't offer any option to view "all files" or similar.  AARGH!
> >(Memo to myself: Must punish the person responsible for this "feature".)
> >
> >- Doug Way
> 
> 1) Now be nice since that code is my fault. I spent a few minutes
> today fixing this.

Ah, somehow I was thinking that it was a generic dialog and thus someone
at Apple's fault.

In any case, idle threats can sometimes be effective in getting things
fixed. ;-)

> With the carbon mach-o version of 3.2.1Beta5 it
> links .image files with the Squeak VM, so installing the new VM gives
> you new icons and helps the finder find the owners for .image files.
> 
> 2) The open file dialog box now will consider that a file is a valid
> file if it is a STim file type, or if the file name suffix matches
> the list of valid suffixes in an existing isThisAnImageFile check
> function.

Sounds good!

> So now you can do 'touch foobar.image' and it will appear as a squeak
> image, you won't get far trying to open that file, but this enables
> you to open images that have lost all traces of meta data.
> 
> Mmm I could add the feature to view 'all files' if one wants, but I'd
> think restricting the option to files of a know suffix might be
> safer, no?

Since image files will pretty much always have a .image suffix,
restricting it to just those files is probably fine.

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com