While Spotlight can return clickable references to Pedia entries that will bring up the specific record in the appropriate application, I am getting nothing but Bruji's profile on an otherwise blank page icon where I had hoped to see details and even possibly a cover image. The forum posts I see date back to Leopard and we are now running Mavericks (with Yosemite just around the corner), but tell me, is this quick view and overflow feature still available? A "CD:" or "Book:" or "DVD:" or even "pediaItem" search will still bring up a list, but links and no more. Am I missing a trick?
Thanks for all you do. The programs remain flexible and quick, clever and useful as ever. This is eye candy that would actually be useful to me.
I am keeping the main database in a shared dropbox folder so that I have access from other devices and these spotlight-found files seem to be from a coredata cache not the database itself. The path on a recent entry reads "~/Library/Caches/Metadata/CoreData/DVDpedia/77100732-DBF9-48E2-BBE0-3BE859986339/DVD/_records/8/1/0" The Collection ID #, which is what I want immediate access to, shows up in the 'More Info' section of the Info panel but a step away from how I understand this should work.
Oh, show me the way...
Spotlight & Quickview
Re: Spotlight & Quickview
The short answer, it's my responsibility and I'm trying to fix it for a next big release.
The long answer, we used to have our own system of XML files that we would write out for Spotlight to be able to index as individual records. Then a a lot of developers started doing similar Spotlight files and Apple decided it was better to integrate this into Core Data automatically. We never adopted it the Core Data system as ours was faster, lighter and more reliable. But Apple then forced us to use it, via continued inclusion in the Mac App Store. Now they have broken it due to permissions issues. Apple's Quick Look demon does not have the rights to read the database model information in order to get the data. Hence the quick look plugin is not doing it's job and showing you a preview of all the data right there in Spotlight, including the collection ID and cover. They updated the system to work for sandboxed applications breaking it for regular applications. I've open bugs with Apple as well as paid Apple engineers, via DTS support ticket, to look into it and provide a work around, but there isn't one due to the sandboxing issues.
Although it's an Apple bug and I have held out waiting for them to fix it, it's seems unlikely at this point. Once Yosemite is released I will explore solution again in the hopes that part of the sandboxing system has changed. Sandboxing DVDpedia would hopefully fix the issue, but not an easy step to take if at all possible due to all the features DVDpedia user are accustomed to that might not be possible under Sandboxing. Plus I am afraid of following Apple down the road of more dependency on them when they have so little regard for fixing bugs that affect us third party developers.
The other solution is to go back to our XML file method, but I want to fix it for Mac Store users as well and they might not allow me the as they did the first time when having me upgraded the automatic Core Data version, even with an explanation of the broken Core Data system.
In the meantime there is a manual solution to have your data available in Spotlight. Turn off the automatic Core Data Spotlight from under the "Help" menu un DVDpedia. Select the "Spotlight" option so there is no check next to it. Restart DVDpedia and it will remove the current index for Spotlight. Create a folder on your drive, it can be a folder in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/MyDVDpedia to keep it all in the same location but if you want to update frequently an easier reachable location might be better. Select all your movies in DVDpedia and drag and drop them to this new folder.
DVDpedia will export all your information into individual files that the Spotlight plugin will be able to index and Quick Look plugin will be able to display. You will then find them in Spotlight and by hovering over (or selecting with the arrow keys) quick look will display all the data. The only downside is you have to manually update the information when lots of it has changed, you can drag individual files to the folder to update or simply select all again and drag as DVDpedia will replace older files with the new information and not duplicate the files.
The long answer, we used to have our own system of XML files that we would write out for Spotlight to be able to index as individual records. Then a a lot of developers started doing similar Spotlight files and Apple decided it was better to integrate this into Core Data automatically. We never adopted it the Core Data system as ours was faster, lighter and more reliable. But Apple then forced us to use it, via continued inclusion in the Mac App Store. Now they have broken it due to permissions issues. Apple's Quick Look demon does not have the rights to read the database model information in order to get the data. Hence the quick look plugin is not doing it's job and showing you a preview of all the data right there in Spotlight, including the collection ID and cover. They updated the system to work for sandboxed applications breaking it for regular applications. I've open bugs with Apple as well as paid Apple engineers, via DTS support ticket, to look into it and provide a work around, but there isn't one due to the sandboxing issues.
Although it's an Apple bug and I have held out waiting for them to fix it, it's seems unlikely at this point. Once Yosemite is released I will explore solution again in the hopes that part of the sandboxing system has changed. Sandboxing DVDpedia would hopefully fix the issue, but not an easy step to take if at all possible due to all the features DVDpedia user are accustomed to that might not be possible under Sandboxing. Plus I am afraid of following Apple down the road of more dependency on them when they have so little regard for fixing bugs that affect us third party developers.
The other solution is to go back to our XML file method, but I want to fix it for Mac Store users as well and they might not allow me the as they did the first time when having me upgraded the automatic Core Data version, even with an explanation of the broken Core Data system.
In the meantime there is a manual solution to have your data available in Spotlight. Turn off the automatic Core Data Spotlight from under the "Help" menu un DVDpedia. Select the "Spotlight" option so there is no check next to it. Restart DVDpedia and it will remove the current index for Spotlight. Create a folder on your drive, it can be a folder in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/MyDVDpedia to keep it all in the same location but if you want to update frequently an easier reachable location might be better. Select all your movies in DVDpedia and drag and drop them to this new folder.
DVDpedia will export all your information into individual files that the Spotlight plugin will be able to index and Quick Look plugin will be able to display. You will then find them in Spotlight and by hovering over (or selecting with the arrow keys) quick look will display all the data. The only downside is you have to manually update the information when lots of it has changed, you can drag individual files to the folder to update or simply select all again and drag as DVDpedia will replace older files with the new information and not duplicate the files.