Spotlight for Leopard

[verma]

Thank you for your tip and sorry for the belated reply. I re-installed the Mellel spotlight plugin and tried reindexing by "/usr/bin/mdimport -r /Library/Spotlight/Mellel.mdimporter" but it does not seem to have worked. I still cannot search contents of mellel documents.

Searching Mellel documents with Spotlight does work in 10.5.2 for me, but the above method of reindexing did is not what got it working. After installing the Mellel Spotlight plugin in 10.5.2, you need to re-index your drive using the 'Privacy' tab in the Spotlight preference pane as described by matthias above.

did you re-index the whole drive, or folders? I've tried with a folder (in and out of privacy) - and it didn't work. No content found. Tried the same file with a keyword - file found. So at least it's indexed for keywords through Mellel. Tried again with content word in the same file - file not found. The terminal line didn't help either. Other file types no problem.

Baffled.

[verma]

But Mellel.mdimporter can't see "normal" contents.

Running Leopard 10.5.2 and Mellel 2.2.7.2, my searches with Spotlight do see normal content.
[I don't use keywords]

Just yesterday I updated a set of mailing lists I keep on Mellel -- I flipped/flopped in and out using Spotlight dozens of times to find the files I needed.

Janet

Bizarre, indeed. Don't know if you could help out narrowing down potential problems - after all your system works:

-What type of installation procedure did you do with Leopard? I did a clean install and then import from backup.
-Is your mellel.mdimporter in root /Library or in a user's library (or system/library)?
-Can you re-install the Mellel plugin without running into the failed installation message?

Thanks

[jolinwarren]

did you re-index the whole drive, or folders? I've tried with a folder (in and out of privacy) - and it didn't work. No content found. Tried the same file with a keyword - file found.

I re-indexed the whole drive. Not sure that just doing it with a folder has the same effect, because Spotlight is still running on the drive itself. I believe that doing this with the whole drive disables Spotlight for that drive, invalidating its index (which is stored on a drive-by-drive basis) which is why doing the whole drive does a full re-indexing. It takes a while to re-index, but is only a one-time thing. Make sure you've updated to 10.5.2.

Also, I just verified that Spotlight is finding text within my Mellel documents, and not just keywords I've added in "Document Info..." in Mellel. Good luck!

[jannuss]

-What type of installation procedure did you do with Leopard? I did a clean install and then import from backup.
-Is your mellel.mdimporter in root /Library or in a user's library (or system/library)?
-Can you re-install the Mellel plugin without running into the failed installation message?

1. This is a brand new computer which arrived with Leopard installed. I migrated all my files over from my old MAc.
2. mellel.mdimporter is in the root /Library
3. I downloaded the Spotlight plugin, but it says OSX 10.4 only. That makes me reluctant to reinstall.

Janet

[jolinwarren]

2. mellel.mdimporter is in the root /Library
3. I downloaded the Spotlight plugin, but it says OSX 10.4 only. That makes me reluctant to reinstall.

If the mdimporter is in your library, there should be no need to reinstall. Just make sure you're running 10.5.2 and have the drive re-indexed using the Spotlight preference pane as described above. However, for what it's worth, running the Mellel Spotlight installer won't do any harm to your system (though it might indicate it has failed at the end). However, I can't see that you would benefit from an install since the mdimporter is already in place.

[jannuss]

However, I can't see that you would benefit from an install since the mdimporter is already in place.

Jolin, Spotlight works fine for me. I was replying to verma's post. I'll be happy to reinstall the Tiger plug-in if you all think it will help you in some way.

Janet

[verma]

did you re-index the whole drive, or folders? I've tried with a folder (in and out of privacy) - and it didn't work. No content found. Tried the same file with a keyword - file found.

I re-indexed the whole drive. Not sure that just doing it with a folder has the same effect, because Spotlight is still running on the drive itself. I believe that doing this with the whole drive disables Spotlight for that drive, invalidating its index (which is stored on a drive-by-drive basis) which is why doing the whole drive does a full re-indexing. It takes a while to re-index, but is only a one-time thing. Make sure you've updated to 10.5.2.

Also, I just verified that Spotlight is finding text within my Mellel documents, and not just keywords I've added in "Document Info..." in Mellel. Good luck!

Just finished re-indexing the whole drive. Sadly, it didn't work. I'm on 10.5.2. Can no longer find older Mellel (.mell) documents either.

I ran mdimport -d2 on a test file, and it reports "imported (name of file) with no plugin". That's not too good. My Mellel plugin is sitting in the root folder, and it's version 1.6.5 (Package contents > info.plist). Terminal doesn't report that it can't use the Mellel.mdimporter, but it somehow can't match the Mellel.mdimporter with the Mellel files. Instead of identifying kMDItemContentType as "com.redlex.mellel.package.document" I get "dyn.followed by a bunch of letters & numbers".

The keywords are indexed via a general Spotlight importer that is not related to the Mellel plugin.

No luck here.

[verma]

However, I can't see that you would benefit from an install since the mdimporter is already in place.

Jolin, Spotlight works fine for me. I was replying to verma's post. I'll be happy to reinstall the Tiger plug-in if you all think it will help you in some way.

Janet

Janet, I wouldn't do that. Something seems to be going wrong with asking the plugin to re-index Mellel files. Forcing a re-index via the Preferences tab seems not to be problematic but perhaps only on the condition that you didn't do anything to the Mellel plugin. I re-installed it (it reports an error, as posted by another user) and I probably shouldn't have done that.

Thanks for helping!

[jolinwarren]

Janet, sorry for the confusion -- I understand now!

I re-installed it (it reports an error, as posted by another user) and I probably shouldn't have done that.

Verma, I don't think that reinstalling the plugin caused your problem, as I also reinstalled the plugin. The issue with the incorrect kMDItemContentType for Mellel files seems more likely, and I don't believe this is related to Spotlight. It's possible that your Launch Services database is corrupt, leading to the incorrect file association. You can rebuild it using the 'lsregister' tool, but if you've changed the default application for any file types, you will have to re-do this after rebuilding the Launch Services database. Location and use of the lsregister tool has changed a bit with Mac OS X releases, but it seems that it is now located at:

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister

Good luck. I hope you manage to solve this!
And based on the help text, I think you could use a command as follows, but NOTE that I haven't tried this myself so it's best to feel comfortable that you understand what you're doing first.

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r /

[daiyi]

Janet, sorry for the confusion -- I understand now!

I re-installed it (it reports an error, as posted by another user) and I probably shouldn't have done that.

Verma, I don't think that reinstalling the plugin caused your problem, as I also reinstalled the plugin. The issue with the incorrect kMDItemContentType for Mellel files seems more likely, and I don't believe this is related to Spotlight. It's possible that your Launch Services database is corrupt, leading to the incorrect file association. You can rebuild it using the 'lsregister' tool, but if you've changed the default application for any file types, you will have to re-do this after rebuilding the Launch Services database. Location and use of the lsregister tool has changed a bit with Mac OS X releases, but it seems that it is now located at:

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister

Good luck. I hope you manage to solve this!
And based on the help text, I think you could use a command as follows, but NOTE that I haven't tried this myself so it's best to feel comfortable that you understand what you're doing first.

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r /

I tried this, too, but no success. Instead of running the command line to rebuild the Launch Services,however, I used MacPilot. Reindexed entire drive and Documents folder. Am giving up for now. I would much rather see the beta of Mellel 2.5 released. Any news Ori?

Thanks.

[verma]

Janet, sorry for the confusion -- I understand now!

I re-installed it (it reports an error, as posted by another user) and I probably shouldn't have done that.

Verma, I don't think that reinstalling the plugin caused your problem, as I also reinstalled the plugin. The issue with the incorrect kMDItemContentType for Mellel files seems more likely, and I don't believe this is related to Spotlight. It's possible that your Launch Services database is corrupt, leading to the incorrect file association. You can rebuild it using the 'lsregister' tool, but if you've changed the default application for any file types, you will have to re-do this after rebuilding the Launch Services database. Location and use of the lsregister tool has changed a bit with Mac OS X releases, but it seems that it is now located at:

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister

Good luck. I hope you manage to solve this!
And based on the help text, I think you could use a command as follows, but NOTE that I haven't tried this myself so it's best to feel comfortable that you understand what you're doing first.

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r /

Thanks - I'll try that over the weekend. Just for testing purposes, I ran Mellel from the admin account. No problems: spotlight indexes and does what it has to do. The Mellel plugin imports correctly, and new content is found. So it clearly is a user-related issue and has indeed nothing to do with the plugin. The plugin works, but not for my user account. I'll dig into that.

I wonder if the others are capable of getting it to work from another account?

[mtp]

jolinwarren-- I reindexed the whole drive after installing 10.5.2 some time ago, but it did not work. I may try that again, though.

In the meantime, I want to report that the problem with using Spotlight in Mail (NOT Mellel) to search full content now works for me (I mentioned this problem in my earlier post). What I did was:

Code: Select all

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

mdimport ~/Library/Mail

which is similar to what was suggested by jolinwarren on Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:25 am. Could this be a hint? By the way I found this code on Apple Discussion site http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 0&tstart=0 I am no expert, so I don't know exactly what the code does, but it did work, which is a relief.

Thank you, verma, for reporting this to Redlex. I hope to find a solution to this soon!

[jolinwarren]

which is similar to what was suggested by jolinwarren on Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:25 am.

Yes, the command you used to rebuild the LaunchServices database is very similar to what I suggested. The only difference is that in your command, LaunchServices only searches the Applications folder(s) for document type definitions whereas my command instructs it to search the whole of the main hard disk.

Sorry to hear that Mellel Spotlight indexing is still not working for some. Clearly the real solution is a Leopard-compatible update from the Redlers!

[verma]

Ok. Problem seems to stem from the dynamic UTI - thanks MTP for the link.

I can't get it to work, though. Tried the lsregister trick, did a launch database rebuild with Onyx, re-index of Spotlight, forced import on admin account (and lost the index there as well) ... there's something going on with the plugin in the mdimport process and I don't know what. I looked for terminal commands to force UTI registration, found some, nothing seems to work.

I have no other versions of Mellel running, open, present or trashed. I re-installed v2272 from scratch, and plugin as well. It didn't help.

I'm out of options. I'll stick to tagging.

[verma]

Yes: no more Spotlight problems with Leopard 10.5.2 on either a user account, or root admin.

This morning, I did the whole set of maintenance provided by Onyx (by Titaniumsoftware); and repaired permissions.
Restarted.
I forced Spotlight's re-indexing via Onyx.

And now I find my mellel content again.

To all those who are having problems, I'd advise that line-up. Run all the maintenance scripts, cache cleaners ... whatever provided via Onyx.

It solved my case.

Thanks to all who contributed with information!
I'll be sending an update as well to our Mellel support team.