Membranophonist’s Ramblings

Previous posts on this topic:

1. Spotlighting Applications
2. More on Spotlighting Applications

Searching was added to the System Preferences application because Windows converts had trouble finding where to change settings. They knew Windows terminology (”wallpaper” versus the Macintosh term “desktop [background or picture]“), but that wasn’t helpful in locating the Macintosh equivalent because there was no search facility. (Why they dropped the customizable toolbar, I don’t know; adding searching didn’t require it or eliminate its utility.)

Most Mac applications have names somewhat related to their function, but some do not. Unison? Cyberduck? Merlin? Shrook? I should be able to search for “Usenet”, “FTP”, “project manager”, or “syndication” to locate those applications, respectively.

Look at the .searchTerms files in /System/Library/PreferencePanes/*.prefPane/Contents/Resources/*.lproj

These are XML property lists that define the keywords that relate to a given pane and determine which sub-section of it will open when a result in the System Preferences’ search field drop-down menu is clicked.

Can applications and third-party preference panes use such files to make it possible to locate them through search tools such as Spotlight and Quicksilver? I’ve tried adding customized .searchTerms files to application and preference pane bundles, but I guess software has to be programmed to use such files.

Along with keywords, the .searchTerms file could include a single-sentence description of the application that would be displayed in search result listings.

Since the keywords can be localized, the application should be launched in whatever language the keyword match appeared.

A similar effect could be achieved by mapping keywords to Uniform Type Identifiers, which then map to applications. For example, “browser”, “web”, and “internet” would map to applications that handle the HTML UTI (”public.html”, “public.text”, “public.data”, “public.item”, “public.content”).