Is it possible to add custom Data Detectors to OSX Cocoa applications? (such as Mail.app / Safari)

As the title suggests...

Is it possibl开发者_JAVA技巧e to add custom Data Detectors to Cocoa apps?

If so, a gentle nudge in the right direction would be great.

Note: To be clear. I want to add new detectors to currents apps. I am not writing a new app.

Thankyou

W

It's not even possible to build a custom data detector on anything but iOS 4. NSDataDetector is only available on iOS 4 and above.

If they existed on OS X and were a plug-in class like Spotlight importers, that'd be a nice feature. Perhaps filing a request at bugreport.apple.com would help it along?

Later update

I think the reason this hasn't been opened up with an API is because they're only meant to find common data (contact info, dates, URLs) for which there is only one (or just a few) uses. That is, contact info can be stored or used in "the" system-designated app. URLs can be auto-highlighted so they're linkable (clicks invoke the system-designated handler - Safari, an app registered to a protocol, etc.). But there's only one direction to funnel those actions and the endpoint is always a major "convenience app" meant to manage this common information (contacts, calendar, browser, email app, phone app...)

On the other hand, consider app-specific information. Data formatted a certain way for use with one app or platform might mean something else entirely to another application. In fact, this is rather common. So what happens when a string like %%SOMESTRING%% is detected? To one app, it might be a placeholder token. To another, it might be a user name. To another still, it might be interpreted as %%USERNAME followed by %%. Suddenly the simple system-wide UI for handling basic data types has to account for multiple actions and/or multiple "data detector plugins" claiming all or part of a format.

I'm not sure we'll ever see custom data detector APIs on iOS or Mac for this reason alone.

While custom data detectors aren't available at the OS level, there is a mechanism that will get you almost there. One possibility is to create a Workflow in Automator and save it in the Services menu.

It can be configured to be active when text is highlighted. You'd either go to the current app's main menu and select the Workflow under "Services", or else right click on the text and go to the "Services" menu from there. Not as easy as clicking on the text as you would a URL, but pretty close.

Create a workflow in Automator on Mac