MacAutostart

I (Alain K) did some prelimary research on Mac Autostart. Seems to be that autostart is possible until Mac OS9 but not with MacOSX.

The program to use such CD is mkhybrid:

• Documentation
• Download
• Download

The program makes an image which is both an ISO filesystem and a MacOS HFS filesystem. Using the -auto flag, you can designate one file (HTML document?) as an autostart file. The feature is managed by Quicktime (i.e. make sure your Mac has quicktime when trying this out).

The downside of mkhybrid is that, unlike mkisofs, it is not able to handle hard links in a proper space-saving fashion (only store hard-linked files once).

Unfortunately, it seems that cdqt20.htm the feature is no longer supported under MacOSX

I (Patrick P) agree, under OS X there is only a way to make a disk image mount automatically and open a Finder window: Mac OSX hints. Those Finder windows contain the icons to the files, generally with a special design, but not more. With Applescript some more is possible, but: Mac Disk Images would need the Mac filesystem (HFS+) which is not readable by Windows without 3rd party utility. I don't think it is important to have Mac OS X Autostart anyway (Mac OS 9 does not matter anymore)

I suggest we use a Windows or Mac/Windows-hybrid filesystem and just have a Windows Autostart.

---

AK: A hybrid filesystem is no longer needed with Mac OSX (a week ago, we successfully mounted a plain ISO 9660 CD in a Mac OSX). As our software is OSX only anyways, I'd suggest we don't bother. However, I'd like to know more about these special icons:

• do they work on a plain ISO 9660 CD, or do they need HFS?
• how to make them (special .ico files?)?