first, I know this is a question is asked very frequently all around the internet. And in 99% the answer is 'it's not possible'.
BUT I'm sure I had a solution once.
I just can't remeber the site. I even can't remember the key words I searched for.
Question:
How can I change/define the path and filename (the format of it) iTunes stores the media, if I let iTunes organise my media?
I would like to have a format like
.../artist/if[album]/artist - title.mp3
I know there is a solution!
If I remember correctly, I had to change something in a xml file.
Note: It might be, that it's not possible with the current version of iTunes.
I don't have an actual answer but I used the keywords 'itunes directory structure xml' and got Folder Structure in iTunes.
One link to About iTunes library files shows how to access the xml file and unfortunately also says this:
The iTunes Library.xml file is no longer used by the latest versions of Apple media applications on OS X Yosemite and later.
Once I had this, I googled 'itunes song artist album directory structure library.xml'. This had many links including Hacking iTunes which looks like it covers everything relevant to this subject.
Hope this helps...
The iTunes library is stored as XML in a file called iTunes Music Library.xml. Using OSX you can find it using command line or Finder at the path:
I think you speak about the XSLT script to generate album listing from iTunes XML or the fantastic iTunes podcast XML generator (you can find this kind of tool when you searching for "itunes xml generator") but here you can modify your playlist, I knew there is no way to change song filenames.
Unfortunately, as explained in the Apple support, "The iTunes Library.xml file is no longer used by the latest versions of Apple media applications on OS X Yosemite and later.." .
In fact, since the iTunes version 12.2 the program does not create XML files. But, as explained in the support page, if you want to re-make the XML files you can change this setting by flag this option:
So , what can be the solution? I think you can work with your XML files to change whatever you want with scripts or online tools as explained above, change your song filenames as recommended here below and , then, try to rebuild your iTunes library:
How to change your song filenames as you wish? You can find tons of multiple filename changer scripts but I think the best you can use is a specific program for Windows called The godfather (the fact that the program have this name and I am Italian is a pure coincidence..), maybe there are also other programs like that but this one doing exactly what you are looking for (some details about it)
A good OSX alternative to the godfather for Windows, according to the alternativeTo site, seems MusicBrainz which make similar things but I've never tried it.
Related
I am not a Mac owner and am putting myself through a crash course to get up to speed (e.g., reading "Switching to the Mac"), to give you an indication of my current level of understanding. The access I have to a physical Mac is limited, so I am trying to connect as many dots as possible before my next session with my friend's computer.
I have: a file folder containing all resources needed for a self-contained application written with Java (OpenJDK 11, JavaFX 11). The JLINK tool was successfully used to create this file folder, and it holds all necessary Java libraries as well as the code I wrote for the application. The executable resides in a subfolder: /bin. The program runs perfectly well on the Mac when the executable is run.
I want: something that is easy to download, install and run.
I'm unclear about what needs to be done to get this. The road map seems to have two main steps:
the file folder needs to be converted into something that responds as if it were an application (e.g., a Bundle? or an .app?)
the resulting folder-as-executable can be shipped via either .dmg or .pkg
For the second part, I've researched and found tools such as Packages or create-dmg. It seems to me these tools are pretty straightforward and shouldn't be too difficult to learn to use. (Just have to pick one or the other or something similar.)
For the first part, I'm on shaky conceptual ground. I've found info about Bundles, but no tutorials, walk-throughs or examples. It looks like a key step is understanding how to make a proper Info.plist file, but doing this properly looks tricky. Also, I'm not clear on how the resulting Bundle will become an .app file or if it needs to, or if there is another, more direct way to make my file folder be viewed by the OS as an application.
Some hand-holding or references to tutorials or even assurance that I am on the right track (if that is the case) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
The Java Deployment guide from Oracle relies heavily on ANT, but doesn't cover the case of a self-contained, customized JVM via JLINK well enough for me to decipher. So, I've taken the approach of trying to learn/understand the necessary steps using command-line commands.
While creating a Bundle is certainly an option, there is an easier way.
Step one is to make an .app manually. An answer to this question: "How to make a Mac OS X .app with a shell script?" goes over the basic steps. The Java file system that results from jlinking has a folder /bin in which there is a bash file that runs the program. This file should be moved to the outermost folder, and it should be named the desired name of the application. The bash file itself will have to be edited and "/bin" added to the address in last command so that the executable will be found. In addition, the folder itself will have to be renamed to be the same as the bash file, but with .app added as an extension.
The next thing I wanted to have was a custom icon. The question "Include icon in manually created app bundle" shows how to do this.
For the next step I made use of the program "Packages". I'm a bit confused about where I downloaded this from (there seem to be multiple sites), but here is a link to the manual. This tool allowed me to create a .pkg file that, when executed, installs my .app in the Applications folder. Then I compressing the .pkg file (to .zip) and made it available at a URL for downloading.
I've had a friend do a test download and install, and the program works!
This isn't meant to be a complete tutorial, and there are a few steps more that I want to figure out pertaining to sandboxing and sealing, but I believe this is a reasonable roadmap that can be used for simpler jlinked Java applications for Mac distribution.
My program needs to locate an existing GhostScript install, and run gswin32.exe (or the 64-bit version if installed) with some command-line options to do a silent conversion of PS to PDF. How should I go about this? I see they add some registry settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GPL Ghostscript\9.07, but I only see a LIB path (which has several paths) and a DLL path, nothing for the EXE. I could work backwards from the DLL path, I guess, but not sure if that will be "future proof".
For the type of app GhostScript is, I would assume they would make this part very easy and obvious, since a lot of programs will be doing exactly this. With all of the free "print to PDF" drivers out there, you would think this info would be easy to find, and maybe it is, but I sure can't find it. Hopefully I'm just missing something, because I don't know where to search, or the right keywords to find it on Google.
I'm tempted to use "GSLite", but so far the only places I've found to download this doesn't have any info on how to download the GS source code for the build of GS they are using, and I think that violates the GS license (not making source code available), so for now I'm just thinking I'll have users install GS themselves, and just look for it -- instead of making it a sub-folder under my app or anything like that.
try ftype (which of course may give acrobat or something, but worth a shot)
maybe some windows expert can tell how to acess the alternate apps list you get by right clicking a ps file...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Artifex\GPL Ghostscript\9.07
After doing a registry search for a few different keywords, I found the above key which contains a (default) string that points to the install directory. I then did a Google search on that registry key and found some links to the GhostScript source code that sets that value, so I think it is safe to use. I would post those links here, but none of them are good sources (one I had to use Google's "from cache" feature, and the other was just a random person posting a snip-it of GS code). I'm sure it is in the official source code download from their website, if anyone else needs to confirm this, possibly a file named nsisinst.nsi, an install script.
What I need is a directory which the user can handle as a single file in the Windows explorer. Does something like this exist? If not, what comes closest?
The closest thing is probably Alternate Data Streams, although those are more akin to MacOS Named Forks than Bundles.
There are also some special cases, for example if you save a website with Internet Explorer you get an HTML file and a folder which are linked together.
Depends on your particular needs. As mentioned above, named streams are possible (on NTFS), however you should notice that not all applications copy files with named streams correctly. In some scenarios regular ZIP archives can work (Explorer shows them as folders). If you are doing software development, there exist libraries that let you store many files in one container file (eg. SolFS).
I think you can create a folder with an extension, e.g. Myfolder.bundle, then you can associate that extension with a custom icon. So it looks like a bundle as far as the end user is concerned.
I posted this basic question before, but didn't get an answer I could work with.
I've been writing applications on my Mac, and have been physically making them into .app bundles
(i.e., making the directories and plist files by hand). But when I open a file in the application by right clicking on the file in finder and specifying my app, how do I then reference that file?
I mostly use python, but I'm looking for a way that is fairly universal.
My first guess was as an argument, as were the answers to my previous post, but that is not the case.
Py:
>>> print(sys.argv[1:])
'-psn_0_#######'
Where is the file reference?
Thanks in advance,
The file is passed by the Apple Event, see this Apple document. You need to receive that from inside your Python script. If it's a PyObjC script, there should be a standard way to translate what's explained in that Apple document in Objective-C to Python.
If your script is not a GUI app, but if you just want to pass a file to a Python script by clicking it, the easiest way would be to use Automator. There's an action called "Run Shell Script", to which you can specify the interpreter and the code. You can choose whether you receive the file names via stdin or the arguments. Automator packages the script into the app for you.
This is not an answer but it wouldn't fit in the comments. To respond to #Sacrilicious and to give everyone else insight on this:
#Sacrilicious You're talking about something different. Download this sample application, it's a python script wrapped as an "App". Look inside and find a 4-line python script: myscript.app/Contents/MacOS/myscript - which will print the arguments using
file = open("/tmp/test.txt", "w")
file.writelines(sys.argv[1:])
Stick it in your Applications folder. Then right click some file and choose "Open With" and select this myscript.app.
Now take a look at /tmp/text.txt and you'll see that something like -psn_0_####### is there and not the name of the file you had selected "open with". This is because the file is passed using Apple Events and not a filename as an argument.
So this question is asking how can you access the filename of the thing that was passed in the python script wrapped in an OS X .app application wrapper, and if someone can let me know that they'll get the Bounty :)
Are we referring to the file where per-user binding of file types/extensions are set to point to certain applications?
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
The framework is launchservices, which had received a good amount of scrutiny due to 'murkiness' early in 10.6, and (like all property list files) can be altered via the bridges to ObjectiveC made for Python and Ruby. Here's a link with Python code examples for how to associate a given file type with an app.
I've never heard of it being done without a Cocoa / Carbon wrapper.
I described how to link certain filetypes to py2app-bundled Python applications at https://moosystems.com/articles/8-double-click-on-files-in-finder-to-open-them-in-your-python-and-tk-application.html
I'm mainly write iPhone apps but am familiar with some desktop Mac authoring. I need to create a Cocoa app that will include several wav sound files (included in bundle). I don't want a user viewing package contents of the .app file and then extracting all of the sound files from it. Is there a way to protect those files?
Here are some possibilities, depending on the effort you feel like putting in:
Encrypt the files
Change the filename and extension to make it less obvios that they're sound files
Embed the sounds inside an executable file, as a custom Mach-O
section
Strip any headers from the files, and store just the raw
samples
Write a program to convert the audio data to C array
declarations, and compile into the app
Just don't worry about it. Nobody's
going to "steal" your sounds, and if
they did, so what?
You can encrypt them. That's about it.