These examples scripts are intended to provide some guidance for
users of DropScript who are writing scripts to create new drop
applications.

  Any of the scripts in this folder can be dropped onto the DropScript
application icon to create a new Mac OS application that performs the
functionality provided by the scripts.  The scripts are:

 GZip.sh - compress a file using the GNU gzip utility with maximal
           compression.  The compressed file will be renamed with a
           ".gz" suffix denoting the compression format.  The original
           file is removed.  See the gzip(1) man page for more
           information.

 GUnzip.sh - uncompress a file previously compressed using gzip.  The
             ".gz" suffix is removed from the expanded file.  The
             compressed file is removed.

 Shove.sh - store a set of files in a gzip compressed tar format
            archive.  See the tar(1) man page for more information.

 UnShove.sh - unpack the contents of a various archive formats:
                - (optionally gzip compressed) tar format file
                  archives [*.tar, *.tar.gz, *.tgz]
                - gzip compressed files [*.gz]
                - Unix compressed files [*.Z]
                - ZIP file archives [*.zip]


Basic Scripts
-------------

 Gzip.sh and GUnzip.sh are very minimal examples.  They have no
significant logic (they merely invoke a command with the same
arguments passed to the script), and demonstrate that scripts used by
DropScript can be quite simple wrappers around commands that accept
file names as arguments.

  Note that the scripts pass the arguments using the "$@" Bourne shell
variable.  "$@" expands to each argument passed to the script and does
no special shell processing of the arguments.  The similar "$*"
variable will work for most files, but will expand files with spaces
in them into two files.  The double quotes around "$@" are required to
ensure this behavior.  See the sh(1) man page for more information.

  Note also that one can, in fact, merely drop these commands
(eg. /usr/bin/gzip) directly on DropScript, rather that writing a
shell script that wraps the commands.  However, the drawbacks to doing
so include: 1) you can't pass along extra arguments to the command
(eg. GZip.sh adds the -9 flag for maximum compression); 2) the
commands may change in newer versions of Mac OS, and you will still be
using the old one, which gets copied into the drop application, rather
than refering to whatever the currently installed version is (this may
actually be a benefit, especially for programs that are not part of
the standard system install); 3) scripts are smaller, and copying the
command into your drop application will make the application larger;
4) the system keeps program data in memory in order to optimize
performance for the user, by making a copy, you may cause the system
to store two copies of the same data in memory; etc.


Script Options
--------------

  Shove.sh and UnShove.sh are more complicated examples.  Each handles
arguments to the script independently using a for loop and uses some
custom logic to get the job done.

  Additionally, they utilize DropScript's ability to customize the new
drop applications created by these scripts by specifying certain
options in the script:

  By default, new drop applications accept any type of file as input.
You can specify the accepted file types for a new application by
listing the file extensions or Mac OS file type for each type of
accepted file in the EXTENSIONS and OSTYPES options.

  Similarly, the new applications role (Editor, Viewer, or None)
defaults to Editor unless specified in the ROLE option.

  Script options are specified within shell script in the following
format:

        # <option> : <values> # comments

  The first '#' character must be at the beginning of the line, and
the second '#' and comment are optional.  There may be any number of
space characters between the tokens in the line.  Tab characters are
also allowed after the values.  The format of the values depends on
the option being specified.  Supported options include:

    Option       Value format
    ------------ ------------------------
    EXTENSIONS   "<ext1>" [... "<extN>"]
    OSTYPES      "<type1> [... "<typeN>"]
    ROLE         Editor | Viewer | None


Application Services
--------------------

  New drop applications export their functionality via Mac OS
application services, which adds items under the Services menu of
applications (such as Finder) which know how to send references to
files via the Mac OS application services.

  Presently, DropScript applications only accept files as input via
application services.

  The menu item for the drop application is the name of the script
(minus the file extension, eg. ".sh") under the DropScript submenu.
You can specify the menu item name using the SERVICEMENU option in the
script.  The format of the SERVICEMENU option is:

    Option       Value format
    ------------ ---------------------------
    SERVICEMENU  <menu name> | "<menu name>"

  Note the menu name may be put inside of double quotes.  A '/'
character in the name means to make a submenu.  For example
"Shove/Make Archive" would mean to create an item "Make Archive" in a
submenu of the "Shove" item in the Services menu.