Recover from XML??

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madrikh
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Recover from XML??

Post by madrikh »

I turned on my machine to work on my mellel file, and instead of a file I found a folder,containing a gzipped xml file and a folder of images. When unzipped, the xml seems to contain the content of the file.

I understand that this is a peek under the hood, but Mellel will not open either the folder or the XML file. Is there a way to get back to the actual file?

Thanks
jzents
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Re: Recover from XML??

Post by jzents »

madrikh wrote:I turned on my machine to work on my mellel file, and instead of a file I found a folder,containing a gzipped xml file and a folder of images. When unzipped, the xml seems to contain the content of the file.

I understand that this is a peek under the hood, but Mellel will not open either the folder or the XML file. Is there a way to get back to the actual file?

Thanks
Can you be more precise? Did you try first to open the file using Mellel and then found that you could not open it, or did you examine the file first and then try to get Mellel to open it? what was the exact sequence of events that you went through? Cheers!
zoul
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Re: Recover from XML??

Post by zoul »

madrikh wrote:but Mellel will not open either the folder or the XML file. Is there a way to get back to the actual file?
Do you mean the “The document failed to open, because the following error: No erorr” thing you get when you decompress the main.xml.gz file and then compress it again? If yes, then all you have to do is leave the main.xml decompressed and Mellel should open the document just fine.
madrikh
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Post by madrikh »

Thanks both; I didn't realize there were so many choices as ways for this to go wrong.

Best I can recall, I opened Mellel and then chose open to navigate to the file. What I saw in the diaglog box was, instead, a folder; I navigated into the folder and saw the .gz and the images folder. I tried various fruitless methods -- the files wouldn't open in Mellel, and d-click on it just gave be the usual choice of extraction programs.

So, from the time I booted the machine last night the damage had already been done.
zoul
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Post by zoul »

Aha. Well, the Mellel documents _are_ in fact folders, but both Mellel and Finder should act as the folder is a single file. If you see the document as a folder in Mellel, there is something wrong (but shoot me if I know what). Maybe try to drag the folder from Finder to the Mellel icon on the dock? As for the “damage already been done”, I think the document is OK.
bashosfrog
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Post by bashosfrog »

I had this problem with .rtfd files a couple of years ago. I found the answer to my problem somewhere on the web and tucked it away in a Devonthink database. I'm guessing that the same fix will apply to your issue. (Have you been fiddling with system settings somewhere? I'm pretty sure I was when things went screwy.) Here it is, straight from DT. I can't say it WILL fix your problem, but it sound suspiciously familiar.

****

rtfd files appear as folders!
 
rtfd files should appear as a document icon, but now they show up as a folder, so TextEdit doesn't open them when I double-click on them (though it will open them properly if dragged in.) You can't associate a folder to be opened by an application, so I can't get the icon back using Get Info:Open With...

Is there some .plist that controls the icons displayed by a file?
Used to be able to rebuild the Desktop, but no more...

Anyone else experienced this? Any ideas?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ian


trevor
04-01-2004 07:36 AM
Basically, the following is somewhat analogous to the process of rebuilding the desktop in Mac operating systems previous to OS X.

You want to delete
/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.6B.csstore (I'm not sure if yours will also use the "6B", you may have something different in place of that. But the rest of the filename will be identical.)
/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.LocalCache.csstore

You can do it from the Terminal by typing
sudo rm /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.6B.csstore
sudo rm /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.LocalCache.csstore

If deleting those two files don't fix the problem, then rename
/Users/affectedusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist to something like /Users/affectedusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist.bkup
(Of course, insert the username of whatever user is having the problem in place of "affectedusername".)

In the Terminal,
mv /Users/affectedusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist /Users/affectedusername/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist.bkup
(all of this command should be typed on one line before hitting Return. Remember, use the real username in place of "affectedusername". There's simply a space between .plist and /Users where the forum probably shows you a carriage return.)

Trevor
madrikh
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Looks plausible

Post by madrikh »

It's been a while since I felt comfortable fiddling with Mac system settings, but that looks like the kind of thing we had to do in the ancient days with resource editing. I'll try it tonight (I have do use some wintel junk at work.)

Thanks
zoul
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Post by zoul »

In pure theory, reinstalling Mellel should do the trick, too. Try removing Mellel, rebooting and the installing Mellel back. I did not try that, but I certainly would if the only remaining option was to delete some unknown files under the superuser privileges :)
madrikh
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From Ori Redler

Post by madrikh »

Mellel's new format is based on the "package" arrangement supported in Mac OS X (this is similar to the way files are saved in Pages, TextEdit, Keynote, and others). Due to Mac OS X bugs, the package, which is at heart a special folder, will sometimes "forget" it is a package and will appear as a folder. There's nothing wrong with the file, of course. Either this will "fix itself" when you restart or you can do that yourself by adding the .mellel filename extension again or changing the name slightly. Again, this is an OS X bug we cannot always fix.

As it happens, the copy of my file I wanted to use the other day is a Chronosynched version of one on my main machine. Happily, when I got back to that one the file was helathy. But I'll have access to the other machine agin soon, and -- if the simple shutdown hasn't already fixed the problem, I'll try these suggestions just to be able to report on which works.
ozean
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Re: Looks plausible

Post by ozean »

madrikh wrote:It's been a while since I felt comfortable fiddling with Mac system settings
You could also delete the launchdb using a tool such as Marcel Bresink’s most excellent "TinkerTool System". It allows for five (I think) free full-featured evaluation runs and might help you perform these tasks more easily.
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