Spotlight searching in Mac OS X version

[bpwhistler]

It would be nice to search my Cmaps from outside of the program. My data is stored in both Cmaps and disparate data systems for various reasons. My other resources are searchable via Spotlight, allowing me a unified search portal for all my information...except my Cmaps.

Apple allows programming Spotlight functionality into Carbon, Cocoa, and Java applications. It's my understanding that Cmap Tools is a Java application, so an OS X specific Cmap application would not have to be written for Spotlight functionality to be added...it could be implemented into the existing Java framework.

Information regarding Apples "Search Kit Programming" can be found at http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... intro.html

Thanks for your consideration

[rcarvajal]

@bpwhistler:

With Spotlight you can search for the file name and ".cmap" extension, but you are not able to search for the content of the concept map.

It could be a good contribution if somebody builds a CmapTools "plug-in" for Spotlight that reads the XML representation stored in the ".cmap" files.

[bpwhistler]

@rcarvajal

Thanks for the reply. I'm not a programmer, but did some research on Spotlight plug-ins and found that they aren't that difficult to write for XML (supposedly...according to the resources I read). It would indeed be a good contribution if a person smarter than myself wrote a plug-in adding this functionality.

[bpwhistler]

Here's a site that outlines the steps and presents a template for Spotlight plug-ins for any application. They state that it's very straight forward...but it's way beyond my knowledge base. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/200 ... light.html

[bpwhistler]

I would consider reasonable compensation for production of this plug-in. I'm not sure if IHMC would need to write this (due to access to source code) or if anybody could write it. I would be willing to compensate either IHMC or a private party for their time. I would prefer IHMC, because then it would be easy for them to "fix" any problems when upgrades to their software come along.

Thanks for your time

If you are interested...post a comment and I'll post my email.

[bpwhistler]

Is anybody interested in writing this plug-in? I think it would be a valuable addition to the Cmap Tools arsenal. Being able to find disparate bits of information scattered throughout different concept maps, while also searching for that same information in the standard Finder file systems at the same time would be very valuable in my opinion. I've contacted several people who write these types of plug-ins...but are unfamiliar with Cmap Tools...and they have suggested it shouldn't be that difficult to write something if they had programming experience.

There must be somebody out there with programming experience that would take the time to write this plug-in.

Thanks for your consideration