Re: Burning CD

[S Goelzer <s.goelzer@ATTBI.COM>]

Hi
From having read Apple's sacred text - The Human Interface Guidelines,
I can pretty much assure you that the Apple interface will thwart you
at every turn when you try to make anything automatic. The core
philosophy has been to make sure the user has control (or least the
illusion of control) of what is happening. Only inits and extensions
will do what you want and they are very tricky to get right (I avoid
all of the little hacks that can be downloaded - they are probably the
single greatest cause of Mac OS problems).

It may be possible to write an Apple Script that runs the CD as you
wish - a simple start icon in a window that pops open on insert. Apple
script is a stunningly powerful hook into the Mac OS and can be very
simple to set up.  It may even be possible to have the script fire when
the CD is inserted. (not much experience with Apple Script, but plenty
of website materials out there).

With OS X and its unix core, (the learning curve just went vertical),
it should be possible to do this - but I still am mostly ignored by
Terminal for lack knowledge.

HTH
Scott


On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 10:35 AM, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> Three people asked about what advice I received
> (see my initial question below). Nobody instructed
> me on how to crate an auto-playable CD (with html
> documents) on Mac.
>
> According to a piece from Google doing this is not a
> good idea. Presumably the ability to launch a disk
> automatically is often turned off in order to reduce a
> possibility of virus contamination. The advice was
> to place a README.TXT file at the CD level. The icon
> of that file will be displayed as soon as the CD is
> inserted. A confused student will naturally open the
> README.TXT file and see my instruction, such as:
>
> "To begin using this disk drag the icon of index.html
> into the icon of your browser."
>
> That is what I will do. And I will put other information
> into the README.TXT file, such as disk's purpose,
> my my e-mail address, etc.
>
> I also called the Apple "online support." The man who
> answered said that creating auto-loadable CD is not
> a trivial matter, that it "has to be programmed," etc.
>
> On Tuesday, May 6, 2003 Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
>
> > I burned a CD with some material to share. It has
> > several folders with html files plus one file called
> > index.html. A user is expected to open index.html
> > in a browser. Is it possible, by using a Mac machine
> > (with OS 10.2.5), to make the disk self-starting? I
> > want the index.html file (telling students what to do)
> > to open automatically in a browser after the disk is
> > inserted.
> >
> > Somebody explained to me that on a PC this can
> > be done by creating the disk-level file, called
> > autorun.ini, with the following content:
> >
> > [Autorun]
> > open=CDLaunch/index.html
> >
> > 1) Is this correct?
> > 2) How can the task be accomplished on a Mac?
> >
> > Write to me in private, unless somebody else
> > expresses interest.
> >
> > Ludwik Kowalski    kowalskil@mail.montclair.edu
*******************************************
Scott Goelzer
Physics Teacher
Coe-Brown Northwood Academy
Northwood NH 03261
sgoelzer@coebrownacademy.com
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