Can't run carbon apps any more!!!

[lurk]

Howdy all,

I think I messed something up today and I am not sure what I did. I am not clueless in the ways of computers but ocassionally the Mac way escapes me.

I cannot run carbon apps from the finder or the dock anymore. Clicking on almost anything just starts TextEdit but it does not seem to have a document, so I am not sure if it is just trying to open the executible as a file???

Since I could not start anythign except for text edit I put Terminal.app into my startup programs and rebooted. That worked I got a terminal!!! Now I was able to start XDarwin and Emacs.app from the terminal but not much else. I was running file on the guts of the app bundles and figured out that I could not apps which were based on CFM format binaries. After a little googling I found that I could use something like this to run these things

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp Internet\ Explorer.app/Contents/MacOS/Internet\ Explorer

Yippiee I learned something but I really which I did have to :-( And this only give me a way to start apps from the terminal.

Can anyone help me get my point and click stuff running again.

Thanks,
-Eric

 

[lurk]

Hi,

I deleted the three LS* files in my ~/Library/Preferences folder and everything is working again, I don't know what I may have lost but at this point I don't care.

Any guesses as to what I did wrong so I won't do it again

Thanks,
-Eric

 

[Gwailo]

I've no idea what you did wrong, but as a sidenote you can also start applications from the terminal with

open -a [application name]
open "file name"

Assuming that the file is in your cwd and the application is in your path, you won't need absolute pathnames.

The open command finds the applicaiton associated with the file you're trying to open (for example, test.txt will open in TextEdit) and the -a switch tells it to open an application (like open -a mail.app).