Can I use one document to open another?

Question

I am assuming this is a scripting problem though I am not a scripter myself.
Basically the situation is this: I have a number of Appleworks documents each of which contains many thumbnails of images, and each thumbnail is also a hotlink to a url for the web page which hosts the full size image. I would be perfectly satisfied with this setup except that the Appleworks icon in Finder is total rubbish, worse even than a Classic icon. I cannot use the Finder (column view) to see from the icon which document it is.
To get around this, I have also saved the same documents in Photoshop as small jpegs, which give a beautiful, sharp, clear, LARGE icon image in Finder.
The problem is that I now have PAIRS of documents, one Appleworks and one Photoshop, a total of more than 50 pairs in a folder. What I want to do is to use the jpeg solely to identify the document in Finder, then when I double-click on it, the Appleworks document opens. Can I link document files together so that if I double-click one, the other opens?
I believe the clue may lie in aliases? I have created an alias of one of the jpegs, and its icon is every bit as good as the original document. Can I now get the alias to point to another document, in this case its paired Appleworks document?

Answer 1

Hello christopher,
Well, you may give this another try, though it's a little out of the scope of your original question. (Technically, custom icon and preview are two things ; ))
The following script will try to get preview image , i.e. pair of 'PICT' and 'pnot' resources, from Photoshop JPEG file and put it in the corresponding AppleWorks 6 file's resource.
If recent Photoshop JPEG file still stores the preview image in that fashion, this script should help. Otherwise, it would do nothing, hopefully. (Try the script on a test folder first.)
To run this script, you need to install Satimage.osax that is free scripting additions made and distributed by Satimage-software, France. See script's comment for more details.
http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/downloadscompanionosaxen.html
Good luck,
H
-- SCRIPT
  make PICT preview of AW6 file from the paired jpg file with fine preview.
  v0.1
  * Using 'list resource', 'load resource' and 'put resource' of Satimage OSAX.
  Preparation:
    • Install Satimage OSAX in either of:
      /Library/ScriptingAdditions/
      ~/Library/ScriptingAdditions/
    * download sources:
      http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/index.html
      http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/downloadscompanionosaxen.html
      http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/downloadsold_companionosaxen.html
  Usage -
    • Copy this script into new window of Script Editor and run it.
     It will let you choose source folder to process and then
     get 'PICT' and 'pnot' data from jpg files and put them into corresponding cwk files.
    * The script assumes that
      - the source folder contains AW6 files and Photoshop jpg files loosely; and
      - their file name extensions are 'cwk' and 'jpg' respectively; and
      - file names without exension are the same for corresponding files.
  e.g.
  source folder structure -
    target folder:
      file1.cwk  -- AppleWorks 6 file
      file1.jpg  -- corresponding (Photoshop) jpg file with fine PICT preview
      file2.cwk
      file2.jpg
  result folder structure -
    target folder:
      file1.cwk  -- AppleWorks 6 file with fine PICT preview obtained from corresponding jpg file
      file1.jpg  -- jpg files with fine PICT preview (not changed)
      file2.cwk
      file2.jpg
main()
on main()
script o
property aa : {}
property fda : choose folder with prompt "Locate the folder to process." -- source folder
property fdp : fda as Unicode text
property jpgext : ".jpg" -- jpg file name extension (including period, case insensitive)
property cwkext : ".cwk" -- AppleWorks 6 file name extension (idem.)
-- get list of jpg files
tell application "Finder"
set aa to (files of fda whose name ends with jpgext) as list -- JPGs
end tell
-- get 'PICT' and 'pnot' resource data from jpg file and put them into cwk file.
set d to -(count jpgext) - 1
repeat with a in my aa
set a to a's contents -- Finder reference of jpg file with fine PICT preview
set n to a's name -- jpg file name
set a to a as alias -- alias of jpg file
set p1 to fdp & (n's text 1 thru d) & cwkext -- corresponding AW6 file path
try
set a1 to p1 as alias -- alias of corresponding AW6 file
-- get PICT and pnot resource data from jpg file
set {PICTid} to list resources "PICT" from a
set {pnotid} to list resources "pnot" from a
set PICTdata to load resource PICTid type "PICT" from a
set pnotdata to load resource pnotid type "pnot" from a
-- put PICT and pnot resource data to cwk file
put resource PICTdata to a1 type "PICT" index PICTid with name ""
put resource pnotdata to a1 type "pnot" index pnotid with name ""
on error -- ignore it silently
end try
end repeat
end script
tell o to run
end main
-- END OF SCRIPT