ABC Transcription Tools - Building and Running the "Open in ABC Transcription Tools" Mac Applet
Demonstration of how to build and run the "Open in ABC Transcription Tools" Mac script-based applet that will allow you to double-click on any .abc file and have it open directly in the ABC Transcription Tools on your default browser.
Thank you Peter Collinson for the idea!
You'll find the script here in my GitHub repo:
https://github.com/seisiuneer/abctool...
Here are the build and usage notes from the source code:
To create the app on macOS:
1. Open Script Editor.
2. Change the script language from AppleScript to JavaScript.
3. Paste in the supplied source code.
4. Choose File → Export…
5. Set File Format to Application.
6. For code signing, select "Sign to Run Locally".
7. Save it in your Applications folder as something like:
OpenInABCTranscriptionTools.app
8. In Finder, click once on any .abc file.
9. Choose File → Get Info.
10. In the Open with section, choose your new app.
11. Click Change All…
After that, double-clicking an .abc file should open it directly in ABC Transcription Tools.
Important information about macOS quarantine warnings:
If a trusted .abc file will not open and macOS says it "could not verify" the file, the .abc file itself may have a quarantine flag. This can happen with files downloaded from the internet, received by email, extracted from downloaded ZIP files, or synced from some cloud services.
To remove the quarantine flag from one trusted ABC file, run this in Terminal:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "/path/to/file.abc"
To remove the quarantine flag from a trusted folder of ABC files, including
all subfolders, run this in Terminal:
sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/path/to/ABC Tunes Folder"
You can drag a folder from the Finder to the terminal to insert the path for you, just wrap it in double-quotes before executing the command.
To verify whether a single file still has the quarantine flag:
xattr -l "/path/to/file.abc" | grep com.apple.quarantine
To verify whether quarantine flags remain anywhere in a folder tree:
xattr -lr "/path/to/ABC Tunes Folder" | grep com.apple.quarantine
If grep prints nothing, the quarantine flag was not found.
Only do this for ABC files or folders you trust.
Notes:
Very large ABC files may still be too large for a practical share link. If that happens, the app will show a warning instead of opening the browser.
This is a simple tool for Mac users who work with local ABC files and want a faster way to get them into ABC Transcription Tools.