RW8 Project file?

Someone’s asked me to give them a hand with a RW project that’s gone wonky. I asked them to send me the project so I could take a look inside and they sent a zip file. When unzipped, there’s a single folder. Inside the folder is the attached.

Any idea why I can’t see an actual project file?
Possible hint: this looks like it was created with RW8 and I’m still on RW7

TIA

Rob

The zip file is the project file, if you right click any sandwich file (app, RW project, pages doc etc) and select ‘show contents’ you’ll see similar to above.

How that project unsandwiched itself I don’t know but maybe this might work … warning … top of my head idea.

  • Make a new RW8 proj and save it
  • close RW
  • right click saved empty proj and select ‘show contents’
  • delete existing stuff and copy the above into it
  • back to parent folder (there’s no save as it’s not a file)
  • see if project opens in RW
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Thanks Paul. I don’t currently have RW8 installed. Maybe this is the little kick I need to get onto it. What’s the feeling, is it stable for most people?

Rob

It doesn’t overwrite 7 so you don’t have to worry about it fucking with 7.
I’ve had 8 since launch but I don’t like it, though 8.1 looks promising … maybe beta 23 in 2020 will be the one to go for :(

Haha. I’m not a fan of this inch-by-inch release model. I think it’s probably fine for people doing the odd website or enthusiasts, but I’ve got about 30 sites going and can’t be beta testing software for other people.

Maybe it is time to upgrade though. Only just feels like I got rid of RW6!

I think all you have to do is to rename that original folder to projectname.rw8 (or the correct “file” extension for rw7).

RW projects are just normal folders, also knows as macOS packages. The OS just hides the content, and as @paul.russam already said, when right clicking and selections show content, the content will appear.

It’s already called ‘name’.rw8 so I don’t think that’s the issue. Anyway, too late for tonight.

Thanks all.

Sorry, I have overlooked this. That’s the case when you don’t have RW8 installed.

The RW8 app tells the OS to display folders with the extension “rw8” to hide its content.

If you install RW8, this folder content gets hidden and displays as a “normal” RW project file.

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Here for reference a definition:

For what it’s worth, I’m using RW8 for all of my sites now- a few are for very large clients that garner thousands of visits per day. So a) these two clients would be very upset if their sites go down, even briefly (which is why I use DreamHost), and; b) I feel comfortable enough to have ditched 7 for 8.

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Thanks Dave, it’s worth quite a lot actually. Are you also running Mojave?

Even official releases of RW feel like betas. This process has no end in sight. When we finally get a stable release, they go for a new major version and the dance starts again. We are all treated as guinea pigs…

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They want on the Mac AppStore and I fully understand why … users and money, I’ve absolutely no problem with that at all.

But…

Apples requrements are draconian, sandboxing is one we’ve heard about and it simply means that each app must operate within its own ‘sandbox’ and must not interact with any other app. There are exeptions such as making use of MacOS’s services such as the colour picker but they’re not really apps in their own rights.

Apple have strict requirements on how an MAS app interacts with the file system with the user having to explicitly agree to an app having access to the FS.
Another one is that links to files (think resources) are via the files unique id NOT its folder path, this is ok if you only have 1 Mac but if you sync files between 2 or more machines (Dropbox/onedrive) then the folder/file path will be identical BUT the id’s will be unique and thus all your resources are broken.

As I said above I’d love to see RW on the MAS but I don’t think it can be done without seriously hobbling RW to meet Apples expectations and more importantly WHY DID RM SUDDENLY DECIDE HALFWAY THROUGH THE 8.1 BETA TO TRY FOR IT?? One of the earlier betas (maybe 5 or 6) looked and worked well but then it all went pear shaped and were at beta whatever with no end in sight.

Sigh…

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Hi Rob, yes, I’m running Mojave. I’ve experienced absolutely zero issues with the combination. I know there has been some complaints about RW8 not being ready when it was released, but maybe I’m comparing it to one of their previous releases- I thought it was just fine.

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I should add that I’m using v8, but not the beta version!

Thanks. I’ll see if I can install 8 tomorrow but I’ll upgrade to Mojave first. See what breaks first!

Putting RW8 on the MAS is just revenue chasing at the expense of existing customers IMHO. Currently you can buy RW7 on the MAS for £38.99! but the only 1 negative 1 star revue must be the kiss of death. Presumably getting RW8 on the MAS will start afresh with no negative revues, and then RW7 can be removed together with the associated bad feedback. Interesting that Sparkle has such a good positive presence on the MAS which must be a deciding factor for the new iWeb customers. Also try searching the MAS for Web Design and sort results by popularity - RW doesn’t even make the first of 2 pages.

“Hobbling RW8” is exactly whats going on and it was also hobbled in an attempt to offer a Blocs App Solis feature which I don’t recall anyone asked for. As a consequence, the new (unusable IMHO) Preview is significantly slower that the RW7 preview which was already painfully slow.

Next week it will be 5 months since RW8 was released and the same bugs have not been fixed it would appear from all of the uncensored posts on the RM forum.

There is too much risk using RW8 for real work whereas at least RW7 remains usable and probably as reliable and usable as RW will ever be.

@rob.beattie I will send you a PM with more info.

Cheers. Appreciate it.

I’ve always been a cautious upgrader thanks to all those years reviewing software for a living. I saw the state of some of the stuff that gets released to users.

It can happen that a project file gets unpacked after transfer when zipped directly in the cloud (maybe Dropbox etc.). You can try to zip the folder and rename it to projectname.rw8 - But make sure that the projectname is the same as before. If nothing got lost in the folder structure that could work. Just renaming the parent folder as @Jannis suggested will not work, it has to been zipped before renaming

If you don’t have RW8, you’re not going to be able to open it. It will look like a folder, as soon as you install RW8, it should become a “package.”

I have been using RW8 and can’t say that I’ve seen anything that would be a show stopper that might make me want to go back to RW7. I have both running on the same machine without issue.
The project files(package) are a different format so you can’t switch back and forth with the same project. When you open an RW7 project with RW8, it creates a newly converted project and leaves the old RW7 project as is. If you do need to go back, you would have to reapply any changes made to the RW8 project manually.

I’m not experiencing any “speed” issues with the new RW8 live simulator, in fact, I found it quite fast and a great addition. If you’re using multiple monitors, it’s quite nice having changes made on one monitor reflected on multiple screen sizes almost instantly on the other monitor(s). I know others have reported “performance issues,” but I haven’t seen any.

Most of the issues Still on the 8.1 betas have been related to Apple’s sandbox requirements to get RapidWeaver back in the App Store. There’s still a good number of problems, but I haven’t had anything that made me abandon 8 and go back to 7.

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