In the fast-paced world of technology, it's always fun to revisit the past and draw inspiration from it. Today we introduce Stapler, a classic Macintosh app that was originally released in 1992 and has been reimagined by a passionate developer to retain its original functionality and add modern improvements and features to make it even better suited to the needs of modern macOS users. modern macOS users.
Author | Matt Sephton
Translation | Jonathan Ssst
A few days ago, I read in Hacker News about a feature in some Linux window managers that allows them to collect tabs from different applications.
This reminds me of BeOS, but it also reminds me of a classic Macintosh application from 1992, Stapler, and how I've talked about it and its spiritual successor, LaunchList, in the past. They're both similar applications that allow you to save time by collecting and launching all the applications, files, folders, and documents associated with a particular task. As Ali Rantakari said in 2009, "Open a bunch of stuff at once on your Mac."
So, over the past day or so, I've been building my own version of this concept for modern macOS!
While my app is inspired by Stapler (even the name) and LaunchList, my app adds its own improvements and features and is more of a hybrid of the two. For example, Stapler doesn't have drag and drop, and LaunchList doesn't have zero-click autostart. My goal was to keep it as simple as possible, but not simpler.
See the GitHub repository for details, downloads, and instructions:/gingerbeardman/stapler
Figure : Stapler, for modern macOS (12.0 or later)
Tell me more
The idea is to set up a Stapler document for each project that contains the associated applications, files, folders, etc. You can then open them all at once by launching a single document. You can then open them all at once by launching a single document. Each document contains a list of aliases that can be managed, checked and launched using that application. The key to saving time is that if you launch a stapled document directly, all the items in its list are launched automatically. Cool!
- Work: text editor, run current game, pixel art editor, bitmap font application, to-do list
- Playback: music apps, Hacker News apps, Twitter apps, scripts for locating windows
- Movie: Shortcut to run Caffeine to keep your computer on, put your monitor to sleep
It's a strange way of thinking about working on a computer - it's task-based, not application- or document-based. Indeed, some might say it's an outdated way of working. But I've been advocating that there are a lot of good things that have been prematurely left behind with the memories of System 7 (although I'm still using it), BeOS, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, GEM, and the Atari ST, among many other alternative desktops. So I wanted to see if I could talk my way out of it.
Detailed information
It's written in Swift and SwiftUI and is 640KB in size, about a third of which is icon files of many different sizes and resolutions. By creating a document-based application, you get tons of features for free, such as document/tab/window management, undo/redo (though I still need to pay attention and refresh the application window), and more.
The editor is a native macOS window, kind of like a list view, spreadsheet or small folder in a file manager ...... depending on your point of view. There are also some menu commands and keyboard correspondences. You can have multiple windows open at the same time, for example one window each for all your frequently used tasks, so that you can start all or some of them with minimal effort.
The items in each list are macOS bookmarks (sometimes called security-scoped bookmarks), which are authorized/validated/secure aliases (in fact, they're still referred to as aliases in code) that have been around for about 10-15 years. They contain paths and more information. With macOS becoming more and more blocked, the recommended way to access files is to retrieve these bookmarks through normal system permissions and security layers. Without bookmarks, for example using only plain text paths, I can't display the full image in Quick Look or easily launch list items. A major benefit of this is that bookmarks can still be resolved even if the file is moved elsewhere on the same disk, or even to a different volume!
I store items in JSON format in saved files simply because I prefer JSON format to XML (which is the main/default option). I want the file to still be readable and editable to some extent.
Files are launched using the default application specified by that file, so changes can be made on a per-file basis. Individual images may be opened in an image editor, an image viewer, an application running OCR, a script running OCR, and so on.
Dealing with files is both cool and annoying, cool in that you can so easily point bookmarks to files, annoying in that you have to jump through so many hoops to get around security and sandboxing protections, end up having to make file requests in a verbose way, and then also have to tweak the plist entries to give the right permissions to the app. I'm using some of the features of SwiftUI, which means the app won't run on versions of macOS prior to 14 Sonoma. All in all, I think modern macOS development is a bit of a mixed bag. Take it or leave it.
icon (computing)
Since this is a quick weekend project, I'm a bit overwhelmed with designing icons. I'd like to have a better icon for the app, as well as a document-specific icon, so any icon designers out there can chime in (/gingerbeardman/stapler/issues/1）。
Extra Tips
Make sure it is unchecked:System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Windows > Close windows when quitting an application
Then, leave its window open when you exit the application. The next time you start the application, its window will be restored to its previous size and position. If you close the window first, then the application will revert to the state of the unopened window.
Thank you:
A brainstorming session with my good friend Dave Roberts (Serendipity App Company) helped me understand why it's so hard to get apps to react differently when opening a document from the Finder. Rip it out and start over! Thanks to Dustin Mierau for starting the trend by reinventing old, forgotten apps for modern macOS. Forever grateful to Chris Patterson and Ali Rantakari for the app.
(sth. or sb) else
- Hacking News