POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.macintosh : POV-files greyed out Server Time
22 Dec 2024 01:27:38 EST (-0500)
  POV-files greyed out (Message 1 to 10 of 10)  
From: FurBall
Subject: POV-files greyed out
Date: 28 Oct 2006 14:05:00
Message: <web.45439a0892946d94f2985afc0@news.povray.org>
I usually work with POVRay for Windows.
The next few months I have a 4x2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 (OSX 10.4.8)at my
disposal. Nice to try it out with POVRay!!!
So, I copied POVRay 3.6 (Mac-version, of course) to the Mac.
It works pretty OK, except for the fact that only certain .pov- and
..inc-files can be opened  from the File/Open-dialogue box: most .pov-files
are greyed out and are not selectable.
I even tried this:
- open .pov-file with TextEdit and copy all text,
- File/New in POVRay, paste text in and File/Save As
- it will render, but I still cannot open that file with File/Open

Is there anything I can do to make ALL .pov-files selectable from POVRay's
File/Open-dialogue?

I appreciate any help!


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 28 Oct 2006 14:41:11
Message: <4543a447$1@news.povray.org>
FurBall wrote:
> I usually work with POVRay for Windows.
> The next few months I have a 4x2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 (OSX 10.4.8)at my
> disposal. Nice to try it out with POVRay!!!
> So, I copied POVRay 3.6 (Mac-version, of course) to the Mac.
> It works pretty OK, except for the fact that only certain .pov- and
> ..inc-files can be opened  from the File/Open-dialogue box: most .pov-files
> are greyed out and are not selectable.
> I even tried this:
> - open .pov-file with TextEdit and copy all text,
> - File/New in POVRay, paste text in and File/Save As
> - it will render, but I still cannot open that file with File/Open
> 
> Is there anything I can do to make ALL .pov-files selectable from POVRay's
> File/Open-dialogue?

Yes, there is a popup menu like in all other file selection dialogs, that
allows you to select files that don't have the right file type. Select to
show all documents there, and you can get POV-Ray to open any file type.

    Thorsten


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From: FurBall
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 28 Oct 2006 20:00:01
Message: <web.4543ebec3bf398bf2985afc0@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> Yes, there is a popup menu like in all other file selection dialogs, that
> allows you to select files that don't have the right file type. Select to
> show all documents there, and you can get POV-Ray to open any file type.
>
>     Thorsten


Thanks for your reply, Thorsten!

I tried that, but the greyed out files just don't show up in POVRay.
If I load a non-greyed out file that way, it does show up.
Almost all of my files are greyed out, so this is a big problem.
All of the files were copied to the Mac in 1 copy-action, so there's no
difference between files there.
I also tried changing Ownership & Permissions for all relevant folders and
files to Read & Write, but that doesn't make any  difference.

What am I doing wrong here?


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 28 Oct 2006 21:15:59
Message: <454400cf@news.povray.org>
FurBall wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, Thorsten!
> 
> I tried that, but the greyed out files just don't show up in POVRay.

What do you mean with "just don't show up", yet you also say "greyed out"?
Clearly, both cannot be the case, so you omitted some step you took, which
is likely the clue to explain and thus correct your mistake.

    Thorsten


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From: FurBall
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 29 Oct 2006 11:15:00
Message: <web.4544d2c43bf398bf2985afc0@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> FurBall wrote:
> > Thanks for your reply, Thorsten!
> >
> > I tried that, but the greyed out files just don't show up in POVRay.
>
> What do you mean with "just don't show up", yet you also say "greyed out"?
> Clearly, both cannot be the case, so you omitted some step you took, which
> is likely the clue to explain and thus correct your mistake.
>
>     Thorsten

OK, here's what I mean:
I select File/Open and most of the files that I see, are greyed out.
I select "All Documents" from the Enable-pulldown-menu and all files become
selectable
- If I select a .pov-file that was previously NOT greyed out and press
Enter, the Text Editor-window opens and when I select the Window-menu I see
the pov-file.
- If I select a .pov-file that WAS previously greyed out and press Enter,
nothing happens. No Text Editor-window, no pov-file in the Window-menu, no
error-message.

The same happens when I double-click a .pov-file in Finder. POVRay starts
and:
- a file that was NOT greyed out (in POVRay) opens as expected
- a file that WAS greyed out (in POVRay) is not displayed in a Text Editor
window, is not visible in the Window-menu and I get no error-message.
---------

In the meantime I tried something else:

I moved all POVRay-folders to another harddisk, so it's no longer in the
Applications folder where I "installed" (copied) POVRay.
The behaviour is the same as described above, EXCEPT:
- when I copy the text of a greyed out test.pov-file to the clipboard in
TextEdit, paste it to a New file in POVRay and save it with the same name
test.pov (overwrite it), close test.pov in POVRay and try to open it again,
it's greyed out and will not open, etcetera.
BUT,
- when I copy the text of a greyed out test.pov-file to the clipboard in
TextEdit, paste it to a New file in POVRay and save it with a NEW name
testnew.pov, close testnew.pov in POVRay and open it again, it will open.

It looks like some files have a (MacOS?)-attribute that is no problem for
Finder  or TextEdit, but is for POVRay.
When POVRay saves a new file to disk, this file doesn't get this attribute
and is handled properly by POVRay's File/Open.
So, I have a (terrible) workaround and/but would still like solve this
problem.
Thanks for your help!!


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 29 Oct 2006 14:50:05
Message: <454505ed$1@news.povray.org>
FurBall wrote:
> OK, here's what I mean:
> I select File/Open and most of the files that I see, are greyed out.
> I select "All Documents" from the Enable-pulldown-menu and all files become
> selectable
> - If I select a .pov-file that was previously NOT greyed out and press
> Enter, the Text Editor-window opens and when I select the Window-menu I see
> the pov-file.
> - If I select a .pov-file that WAS previously greyed out and press Enter,
> nothing happens. No Text Editor-window, no pov-file in the Window-menu, no
> error-message. 

Ah, OK, now I understand what you are doing. Indeed, other than three beeps
there currently is no feedback if you force POV-Ray to open a file it cannot
handle. There is only one condition under which this can happen: The file
is, or at least claims to be, no ordinary text file. Are you certain you
have plain text files, and did not accidentally create an Rich Text or
Unicode text file? If I create a new file with TextEdit and select "Western
(Mac Roman)" as encoding when saving the file, it works just fine in POV-Ray.

    Thorsten

PS: It is expected behavior that applications ignore files dropped on them
that they cannot handle (well, POV-Ray beeps). However, I agree that there
should be an error message in case the user forced opening of an unsupported
file type if that file type cannot be handled at all.


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From: FurBall
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 30 Oct 2006 12:45:01
Message: <web.45462f043bf398bf2985afc0@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>
> Ah, OK, now I understand what you are doing. Indeed, other than three beeps
> there currently is no feedback if you force POV-Ray to open a file it cannot
> handle. There is only one condition under which this can happen: The file
> is, or at least claims to be, no ordinary text file. Are you certain you
> have plain text files, and did not accidentally create an Rich Text or
> Unicode text file? If I create a new file with TextEdit and select "Western
> (Mac Roman)" as encoding when saving the file, it works just fine in POV-Ray.
>
>     Thorsten


The .pov- and .inc-files I started with, were created on a PC.
Uploaded them to my webspace and downloaded them again with the Mac.
Maybe their creation on PC or their transport through Unix has something to
do with it.
I don't understand why most, but not all, of these files were greyed out.

I don't know how to check the file-format on a Mac, but here's what I did:
Load a test.pov-file in TextEdit and select Save As test.pov(same name,
"Western > Mac Roman" is default).
The file will still be greyed out in POVRay, but this time I can open it by
selecting All Documents in File/Open.

So, unfortunately, re-saving the files in TextEdit doesn't completely solve
the problem.
Seems that the first workaround (paste text in POVRay in new document)
remains my only option.

Thanks a lot for your help!!!!


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 30 Oct 2006 15:34:20
Message: <454661cc$1@news.povray.org>
FurBall wrote:
> The .pov- and .inc-files I started with, were created on a PC.
> Uploaded them to my webspace and downloaded them again with the Mac.
> Maybe their creation on PC or their transport through Unix has something to
> do with it.
> I don't understand why most, but not all, of these files were greyed out.

Ah, that would explain it. likely somewhere along the way the fact that they
are text files gets lost, and without knowing the extension on the Mac side
they when you unpack or just download them, they get marked as data. One way
to go is to zip them, download the zip and then unpack the unzip file via
the command line (using Terminal) or with StuffIt Expander. That way they
should survive. The command line unzip does not set any file types, and
StuffIt Expander can currently detect most text files. So either will work.

    Thorsten


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From: FurBall
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 31 Oct 2006 13:50:00
Message: <web.4547999e3bf398bf2985afc0@news.povray.org>
>
> Ah, that would explain it. likely somewhere along the way the fact that they
> are text files gets lost, and without knowing the extension on the Mac side
> they when you unpack or just download them, they get marked as data. One way
> to go is to zip them, download the zip and then unpack the unzip file via
> the command line (using Terminal) or with StuffIt Expander. That way they
> should survive. The command line unzip does not set any file types, and
> StuffIt Expander can currently detect most text files. So either will work.
>
>     Thorsten

I tried what you suggested.
This works a little better!
POVRay still has the files greyed out, BUT double-clicking them from Finder
will open them in POVRay!!
So, I guess I will be opening them from Finder for the next couple of
months.

Thanks an awful lot for all your help, Thorsten!!


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: POV-files greyed out
Date: 31 Oct 2006 14:50:48
Message: <4547a918$1@news.povray.org>
FurBall wrote:
>> Ah, that would explain it. likely somewhere along the way the fact that they
>> are text files gets lost, and without knowing the extension on the Mac side
>> they when you unpack or just download them, they get marked as data. One way
>> to go is to zip them, download the zip and then unpack the unzip file via
>> the command line (using Terminal) or with StuffIt Expander. That way they
>> should survive. The command line unzip does not set any file types, and
>> StuffIt Expander can currently detect most text files. So either will work.
>>
>>     Thorsten
> 
> I tried what you suggested.
> This works a little better!
> POVRay still has the files greyed out, BUT double-clicking them from Finder
> will open them in POVRay!!
> So, I guess I will be opening them from Finder for the next couple of
> months.

Note that the reason they are greyed out is has nothing to do with their
file extension: If you can open files by drag and drop from the Finder, you
can just as well open them in the file open dialog. All you have to do is
select "All Documents" as previously outlined. What makes POV-Ray decide
that it can handle a file is independent of that of the file selection
dialog (which is supplied by the operating system and operates under some
annoying constraints)!

In fact, the method used to pass a file selected in the dialog to POV-Ray to
open it is identical to the method the Finder users to tell POV-Ray to open
it - both use Apple Events, aka Apple Scripts "open" event you can also
create in the Apple Script editor.

	Thorsten


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