Contextual Menu Workshop

Abracode sometimes receives requests for a specific Contextual Menu plug-in. If you are a programmer and you would like to develop a plug-in, here are some ideas:

Line Break Converter
A contextual menu item which would convert line breaks in text files (CR -> LF for example).
This one is already implemented as a command description for OnMyCommandCM.

Services CM
The services menu under the contextual menu. It is a pain to have to highlight text and than move your mouse all the way up the menu bar.

Eric Schlegel of Apple says:
"We're aware of this issue and I agree it would be a useful thing to do. The tricky part is that the Carbon implementation of Services requires that a Carbon event be sent to an event target representing the object to which the service would be apply. When a contextual menu is opened, there is no event target passed to the Contextual Menu Manager to indicate the object to which the menu applies; therefore, the Services support in Carbon has no where to send its Carbon events.

I've got some ideas for new Contextual Menu Manager APIs that would take an event target so we could solve this in the future, but it will probably require application adoption."

Open Terminal Here
A contextual menu item to open a folder in a new Terminal.app window. This should be relatively easy to do by sending a "do script" event to Terminal.app with "cd /path/to/folder/". It should be available in the contextual menu for a folder only (not for a file).
This one is already implemented! Look here.
The same trick can also be performed with OnMyCommandCM.

Visibility CM
A user can select single or multiple files/folders and make them invisible via the CM, selecting 'Make invisible'.
To make an item visible again, the user control clicks on the parent directory (folder) of the hidden files location. Selecting and holding the option, 'Make contained item visible', a sub menu appears listing all the hidden files in that directory. The user then simply selects the file they wish to make visible.
The two options in the CM would be:
Make invisible
Make contained item visible

View CM
A contextual menu item which would add a View menu for open Finder windows (like a built-in contextual menu in Mac OS 9).

Icon Tools CM
A CM with functions for copying, cutting, and pasting icons. This would be so much nicer than having to bring up the info dialog just to put an icon on an item... or multiple items.
Take a look at PIXTURE STUDIO FinderIconCM (freeware) developed with Contextual Menu Workshop!

Window Tamer
There used to be an app/cm combo for OS9 called Window Tamer... it basically allowed users to save view options as "sets"... and allow a user to set any Finder window to look like that "set". For instance... my normal icon view, I like to have them set to 48x48... but in my icon collection windows, I like to see them full size at 128x128. As it stands... I have to set each window manually to conform to specific "view" settings. It would be very handy if I could make custom "sets" of view settings and, with a right-click on a Finder window background, set that window/directory to conform to those view settings instantly.

Thumbnail Viewer
A CM thumbnail viewer with extra options, such as copy, convert, delete, view as fullpage tiled, scroll through folder of images, etc...
PIXTURE STUDIO offers free QuickImageCM 1.4 which was developed with Contextual Menu Workshop!

Lift and Set CM
There was a Lift and Set CM under 9 that would allow you to lift/copy the File Type and Creator (or just one or the other) from one file and then when you clicked on the another file(s) give you the option of pasting/setting the Type and/or Creator for that file.
This one is already implemented as a set of command descriptions for OnMyCommandCM.

Arrange CM
A plug-in for arranging files, providing a menu which was in Mac OS 9: arrange by name, size, kind, etc.

Re-wrap selected text
A Contextual menu command for re-wrapping selected text or, even better, text in an open mail client or word processing window.

TextViewCM
Something similar as QuickImageCM, but for text. So you can just ctrl-click f.i. a rtf, txt file and you're able to view it's contents.

Please send me a note if you plan to develop any of the requested plug-ins.
If you are an end user looking for some specific plug-in, I may put your request here, where there is a chance that some developers might see it.