How to support Finder preview pane for new application file types

[rhoge at nmr.mgh.harvard.edu (Rick Hoge)]

On Mar 6, 2004, at 2:16 AM, Martin H?cker wrote:

>> Would be great to get *something* like this working as our scientific  
>> app involves creation of a lot of data files that can be tedious to  
>> keep track of.  Will probably write some kind of custom browser (like  
>> Photoshop's browser) but if there was a way to get this "for free" in  
>> the finder it would be huge for us.
>
> I believe that any file quicktime can display will show a preview in  
> the finder.
>
> So perhaps you can get lucky if you write some sort of  
> quicktime-viewer that treats the data as a kind of image?

There are hints that this can be done - for example

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/RM/ 
WritingQTComponents/PrevComp/rmPrevComp/chapter_1_section_1.html

and particulary

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/RM/ 
WritingQTComponents/PrevComp/rmPrevComp/chapter_1_section_4.html#// 
apple_ref/doc/uid/DontLinkBookID_441-DontLinkChapterID_1-86608

The second link seems to show an example of how to generate a preview  
component that can be launched by something called component manager  
(sounds like legacy/Carbon stuff).  However the pages don't really say  
how to install and register this component and after spending a few  
hours searching I have not found any really helpful examples of how to  
take this from start to finish.

I've got most of what I need from the previous replies that pointed me  
to IconFamily, which is a Cocoa wrapper for the Carbon calls needed to  
add an icns resource to files.

Thanks again - this discussion group has been really helpful!

Rick