Snow Leopard Services Tutorial for Contextual Menus

Question

I'm relatively new to OSX programming (i.e. really new) and I find myself in need of creating a Contextual Menu that ties into Finder. From what I've read here as well as online, this is only possible through the use of Services in Snow Leopard. I found the Apple Developer guide at

Apple Services Implementation Guide

But it's not sufficiently detailed for me. I really would like a "basic" Services package/tutorial/something that I can just follow step by step or modify to learn from.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated :-)

Answer 1

The information you're looking for is here: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SysServices/Articles/providing.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000853-98828.

To plagiarize: A service can be offered as part of an application, such as Mail, or as a standalone service—one without a user interface that is intended for use only in the Services menu.

To build an application that offers a service, use the extension .app and install it in the Applications folder (or a subfolder).

To build a standalone service, use the extension .service and store it in Library/Services.

In either case, you should install it in one of the four file-system domains—System, Network, Local, and User. (See File-System Domains in File System Overview for details.)