metadataimporter for spotlight...

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In article <nobody-36C458.18362314122006 RemoveThis @comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
John Rethorst <nobody RemoveThis @nowhere.net> wrote:

> In article <uce-91695F.21050714122006 RemoveThis @comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
> Gregory Weston <uce RemoveThis @splook.com> wrote:
>
> > It should be in /Library/Spotlight or ~/Library/Spotlight. Just drag it
> > out of there.
>
> What is the functional difference between these two places for an .mdimporter
> file? If in the user's library, surely it doesn't just index that user's
> documents?

The contents of ~/Library in general will either supersede or augment
the contents of /Library (and /System/Library). For the case of
mdimporter plugins, it's not that the plugin will only process that
user's documents. It's that only under that user will that particular
importer plugin be found and used.

If you keep an application in ~/Applications because you're the only one
that uses it, you'd probably keep the importer it came with for its
documents in ~/Library/Spotlight because it wouldn't benefit anyone else
on the machine to have that importer load and execute. Wouldn't hurt
either, but it will consume miniscule extra time and, if you for some
reason put a document in a shared location, miniscule extra space
generating index data from which other users wouldn't benefit.

--
The best intentions in the world don't make a flawed argument magically valid.