3 replies to this topic

[mw3210lind]

I would love to see the ability to create a short hand glossary that would be editable and usable by all accounts on a given machine.

I have one Administrator account and a general use account. If I create shorthands in the Admin acct, I'd like to be able to access them from the general use account and vise-versa. That would greatly reduce duplication of effort and greatly enhance usability.

Thanks.

[Evan Gross]

mw3210lind, on Aug 15 2006, 12:56 PM, said:

I would love to see the ability to create a short hand glossary that would be editable and usable by all accounts on a given machine.

I have one Administrator account and a general use account. If I create shorthands in the Admin acct, I'd like to be able to access them from the general use account and vise-versa. That would greatly reduce duplication of effort and greatly enhance usability.

Thanks.

You can easily do this - the only caveat is that the file should either be locked (via the Finder's Get Info window) or have read-only permissions - at least whenever the file is in use by more than one user. If one user makes a change to the shorthand glossary document, others won't notice the change, as the file is (generally) read into memory when Spell Catcher first opens it (for performance and other reasons).

There are two ways you could do this:

1. Put the file to be shared somewhere accessible by all users. The /Users/Shared folder is a good place. You can then add it to your list of References in Spell Catcher Preferences, References pane via the Add button.
2. If you create a Spell Catcher application support folder in (root of boot volume) /Library/Application Support/, Spell Catcher will load files from there as well as your home Library. To do this, manually create the folder structure in /Library/Application Support like this:

/Library/Application Support/Spell Catcher/References/

and place the shared glossary file in the References directory. Spell Catcher will automatically load any files in the folders named Additional References, Additional Languages, Licenses, Modify Selection Macros, and References in its application support folder, from both the user domain and local domain.

NOTES: Make sure that you don't have the same file in both places. Make sure you set the permissions to read-only or lock any reference documents that may be in use by different users at the same time.

There are other approaches, but the above are probably the easiest.

[mw3210lind]

Evan Gross, on Aug 16 2006, 07:52 AM, said:

mw3210lind, on Aug 15 2006, 12:56 PM, said:

I would love to see the ability to create a short hand glossary that would be editable and usable by all accounts on a given machine.

I have one Administrator account and a general use account. If I create shorthands in the Admin acct, I'd like to be able to access them from the general use account and vise-versa. That would greatly reduce duplication of effort and greatly enhance usability.

Thanks.

You can easily do this - the only caveat is that the file should either be locked (via the Finder's Get Info window) or have read-only permissions - at least whenever the file is in use by more than one user. If one user makes a change to the shorthand glossary document, others won't notice the change, as the file is (generally) read into memory when Spell Catcher first opens it (for performance and other reasons).

There are two ways you could do this:

1. Put the file to be shared somewhere accessible by all users. The /Users/Shared folder is a good place. You can then add it to your list of References in Spell Catcher Preferences, References pane via the Add button.
2. If you create a Spell Catcher application support folder in (root of boot volume) /Library/Application Support/, Spell Catcher will load files from there as well as your home Library. To do this, manually create the folder structure in /Library/Application Support like this:

/Library/Application Support/Spell Catcher/References/

and place the shared glossary file in the References directory. Spell Catcher will automatically load any files in the folders named Additional References, Additional Languages, Licenses, Modify Selection Macros, and References in its application support folder, from both the user domain and local domain.

NOTES: Make sure that you don't have the same file in both places. Make sure you set the permissions to read-only or lock any reference documents that may be in use by different users at the same time.

There are other approaches, but the above are probably the easiest.

Thanks for the feedback. I tried option 1 and while it does let me access the file from the general use account, it doesn't give the option of adding words to that file so that any new shorthands would be accessible from the Admin account.

I'd like the shorthand glossary to be accessible and editable from either account if that is possible...

[Evan Gross]

mw3210lind, on Aug 17 2006, 06:17 PM, said:

Thanks for the feedback. I tried option 1 and while it does let me access the file from the general use account, it doesn't give the option of adding words to that file so that any new shorthands would be accessible from the Admin account.

I'd like the shorthand glossary to be accessible and editable from either account if that is possible...

You can always change the ownership & permissions of the file so that all users have write access. While logged into your admin account, do a Get Info on the file in the Finder, show the Ownership & Permissions pane, show Details, and set the access for Others: to Read & Write.

As I mentioned before, you have to be careful here, at least if multiple users are logged in and using the file at the same time. Changes made by one user will not be automatically available to the other, and it's conceivable the file could even get damaged or corrupted if multiple users have the file open and are modifying it. Remember, Spell Catcher isn't a multi-user database - or at least doesn't use one as a back end for managing it's documents. The same is likely true for the vast majority of apps - not really anything specific to Spell Catcher.

Provided you keep that in mind (or if it's not the case that multiple users will be accessing the file at the same time), you should be OK.