[MlMt] Debugging custom keystrokes (another newbie question)

[David Ledger]

On 10 Nov 2017, at 4:04, Paul Sture wrote:

> On 6 Nov 2017, at 14:54, David Ledger wrote:
>
>> On 6 Nov 2017, at 10:23, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:
>>
>>> On 4 Nov 2017, at 19:59, Robert Goldman wrote:
>>>
>>>> Follow-up questions:
>>>
>>> I *think* most of your questions are answered 
>>> [here](https://manual.mailmate-app.com/custom_key_bindings.html#key-bindings-in-mailmate).
>>>
>>>> 2. Would it be possible to add a log entry if MailMate does not 
>>>> find a file?
>>>
>>> I've added this.
>>>
>>>> 3. Are there any characters forbidden in filenames?
>>>
>>> No.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Benny
>>
>> ‘/‘ is to be avoided in filenames in Unix systems generally. 
>> Having worked with Unix since (just) before the Mac I’ve never 
>> tried using it with OSX. It may (or may not) work, but it’s a 
>> low-level fiddle-around if it does and could break. Similarly I avoid 
>> ‘:’ as that used to be the pathname separator pre-OSX, even 
>> though it wasn’t as visible to users. There used to be a 
>> compatibility fiddle-around for that, but Apple may have dropped that 
>> by now.
>>
>
> If I remember correctly, ":" is used by AppleScript as the pathname 
> separator.

Pre-OSX that was generally the case on the Mac, and so filenames with 
embedded ‘:’ characters were not allowed. OSX, being Unix based uses 
‘/‘ instead, and added workarounds so that files with either would 
sort of work, but they had to be invisibly changed to allow things to do 
so.

There is a Unix system library routine that takes a string of characters 
as an argument and returns a pointer to a file on the basis of that 
string being a file path. The string has to consist of sub-strings 
separated by some delimiter. Each substring before the last is taken to 
be a directory (folder) name, and the last is a directory, file, device 
or a couple of other things. Obviously the delimiter used can’t be a 
component of any substring. This is a fairly low level routine and OSX 
will have to use it to be ‘Unix’. Unix used ‘/‘, Apple used 
‘:’ and DOS used ‘\’ (which wasn’t even available on generic 
terminal device keyboards back then - i.e. Teletypes).

David

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