How to support Finder preview pane for new application file types

[ropers at ropersonline.com (Jens Ropers)]

quoting Rick Hoge and David Dunham:

> > Generally the Finder seems able to show a preview image, as well as
> > the text fields Name, Kind, Size, Created, and Modified.  How are
> > these fields generated?  Is it possible to provide custom fields for
> > new file types?
> 
> I don't think you can customize Finder so that your file shows 
> different fields. I assume you're not asking about how Name, Size, 
> Created, and Modified are genereated -- Kind once came from the 'kind' 
> resource but now would be from the application's property list.

(1) I don't know if this is what you want or if it might be sufficient for 
your purposes, but think of, say, the preview pane in column view: In 
it, eg. the actual contents of a PDF file can be displayed as a 
thumbnail. Also, if I create ordinary text files in BBEdit, the preview 
column will show the beginning of the actual text (the file's contents). I 
have a hunch that it /should/ be possible to utilise the underlying 
plumbing behind these features, allowing this to work with new file types 
and content.

(2) What I think *cannot* be done is customizing the panes that get 
displayed with Get Info.

Unfortunately I don't actually know /how/ (1) could be implemented.

Sorry for this feeble answer, but I was simply not sure which of these 
two things you were referring to, so I thought I'd reply as above.

Jens
-- 
www.ropersonline.com

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Way off topic but amusing:

As we speak I am sitting in front of a notably darkened 15in CRT 
(800x600! wheee!) and a Pee Cee with:
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with Win98, please give me a shout). 
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- and finally an extremely bad conscience that's telling me I should 
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but I just don't have the time and/or 
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html";>cannot be arsed</a>.