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What's new?Introduction
Welcome to the homepage of AEP, the Active Extension Processor. AEP started out as a way to test Applescript and OS X's multitasking abilities. I thought a nice project would be to see if you could do something like Aladdin Systems Archive via Rename in OS X. (As I don't own a copy of StuffIt Deluxe, I'm not quite sure how exactly that functioned under OS 9 and earlier, so tell me if I succeeded.) When it proved possible, it seemed a shame to leave it at that and so AEP was born.
AEP no longer just, ehmm... mimics Archive via Rename, it is now a background application that allows you to run other applications when you change the name of a file or folder in the Finder. This allows you, e.g. to compress or expand files, simply by adding or removing file-extensions like ".gzip", ".sit" and ".zip". You can also use AEP to change the format of a file, just by changing it's file extension. To turn song.mp3 into an aiff-file, you just replace the mp3 by aiff.
The real strength of AEP is it's expandability. By writing plug-ins in Applescript, you can customise AEP's behaviour and adapt it to suit your own personal needs. Do you want to e-mail documents as attachments by adding ".mailme" to them? Do you want to turn Postscipt-files into PDFs by changing their file-extensions? Do you want to encrypt sensitive documents by adding ".secret"? If you can do it with Applescript, you can let AEP do it for you.
How to use
You should have little trouble getting AEP to work. To install it, simply expand the downloaded file and put the AEP folder anywhere you like. You will probably want to include AEP in the list of applications your Mac starts running when it start up by choosing the Login item from the System Preferences and adding it to the Login Items. Alternatively, you may choose to start AEP yourself each time you think you need it. (AEP uses very little system resources when the Finder is in the background, but you might like that kind of control. Who am I to judge?)When active AEP will constantly monitor the current selection in the Finder. The moment you change a file or folder name, it will compare it with the previous one to see if there is an appropriate action defined for it and will undertake that when it finds one. AEP will remove the changed item from view, do it stuff and replace it with the new item you specified. That's it! (Of course, there are all kinds of options you can set, e.g. you can choose to have the original item moved to the trash or let AEP delete it immediately, but you don't have to bother with that if you don't want to.)
AEP is smart enough to recognise changes you make to file extensions that are no longer at the end of a file name. So if you change file.sit.zip to file.hqx.zip it will expand and recompress the file accordingly.
Limitations
There are three things you should be aware of when using AEP: it relies on plug-ins and helper applications, it tries to limit it's own drain on the system resources, and it was written in Applescript Studio.AEP's main weakness is related to its strength. Of itself, the application does almost nothing. Only with appropriate plug-ins can AEP be of any use and those plug-ins need applications to perform their tasks. No applications, no plug-ins, no AEP. Fortunately, OS X comes complete with an entire library of Unix-goodies, which you can run from Applescript. There are also many freeware and shareware applications that can either be scripted or run through drag-and-drop and which can therefore be used with AEP. Still, when you download a plug-in, you should read its supplied documentation to see if you should also download an helper application, and whether or not you should change that application's preferences in any way. So, e.g. the plug-in for Aladdin Systems DropStuff that is included with AEP, assumes that DropStuff will put the compressed file inside the same folder as the original item. If your copy acts differently, you should either change it's preferences or edit the Applescript plug-in.
Watching the Finder to see if a user changes a file or folder name can put an enormous drain on the system resources. When you are working in the Finder, AEP (and the processes it questions) might easily claim over half of the CPU time. Because of OS X's wonderful pre-emptive multitasking, you shouldn't really notice that, unless you are running processor intensive other applications in the background. Putting such a claim on the system resources might be justified when you are working in the Finder and want AEP to react immediately to any changes you make, but is unforgivable when the Finder is in the background. At that time AEP goes into a kind of hibernation and only awakes every so often to check if the Finder is again the active foreground application. Though this works reasonably well, you might just be quick enough to switch to the Finder and change a file-name, before AEP can catch up with what you are doing. In that case, it will miss the change you made and not react. This shouldn't happen to often, but if it does, just don't say I didn't warn you.
Finally, you should be aware AEP was written in Applescript Studio. That really shouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately it seems some of the interface elements Applescript Studio provides occasionally act up. (Though, I'm sure Apple will fix them in the "next release". :-) ) AEP uses one of those elements in its preferences window: the table view. This means that now and again, when you are changing the preferred plug-in for an extension, AEP will quit on you. If you know of a way to work around this, please let me know. (If AEP was written in Cocoa it probably wouldn't suffer from this problem. As it is, I feel much more comfortable using Applescript than Object-C, but if I ever get to grips with that, I'll give AEP a total rewrite.)
System requirements
Though it might be possible to run AEP on an earlier version of Mac OS X, it will do so on 10.1.2 and higher.For best results, you should have Mac OS X 10.1.5 and AppleScript 1.8.3 or higher installed.
Price
There is one other point that might make this AEP somewhat more attractive: it's free. I feel you shouldn't have to pay for an application that might quit on you when you want to change its preferences.If you feel this application is worth something and you want to spend some money, donate it to your favourite charity. When you haven't got one, might I suggest Amnesty International? (Please note, Amnesty International has absolutely no connection with or responsibility for this application and can be blamed even less than I for what you do to your system with it.)
Author
AEP was written by Roger Jolly, when he should have been working on a thesis on computing and learning in local government finances. Knowing that, can you blame him?
If you like AEP, have suggestions for improvements, have written a useful plug-in, or will improve the AEP's icon, please let me know.
Roger_JollyATmacDOTcom
http://homepage.mac.com/roger_jolly/aep/index.html
Legal stuff
Please note, I can't be held responsible for any damage that results from the use of this software. AEP comes with no warranties, explicit or implicit, nor any guarantee that is works. You use AEP at your own risk.Any and all trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners. They too, are not responsible for anything you let AEP do to you.
You are free to redistribute AEP in any form as long as you don't charge for it and include the original package. If you want to include AEP on a CD-ROM, DVD or any other removable medium, I hope you will contact me and send me a copy. In all other cases you should contact me, too.