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So the text editor on Windows is crap. I realize I could find a fancier text editor that works within Windows but I'm happy with TextMate on my Mac and I'd rather not have two "fancy" text editors (one for the windows guest and one for the mach host).

Is there a way I can right-click a windows (again, I'm running Windows XP as a guest operation system under Fusion) txt file and have it open in TextMate on my Mac?

I woudn't mind if I had to do this manually each time but a permanent association would be even cooler...

In case it helps the guest is Windows XP (latest SP) and the host is OSX 10.7.3 with the latest Fusion. Also, I've got several directories mapped from the Mac to the Windows installation (as Z: drive or something) in case this helps and can add more shares.

PS - I don't expect anything crazy like that TextMate would show up "within" Windows XP. I'm happy have TextMate launch outside of the guest OS window with the file in question. More bonus would be if I could edit the file and save it (the save going to the Windows guest).

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If you keep your files in the OS-X file system and share those folders with your guest - as in your Z: drive example - you can access them from either OS (or both, if you're careful), plus however you backup OS-X will also back up your changed XP files without its having to backup your entire guest VDD for a (e.g.) one-line edit.

The save would not go to your guest file system though, so if that's a hard requirement, this suggestion won't help. If you just need the guest to have access to it, this would be the way to go.

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  • Yeah, the tough thing is that I have some SDKs that insist on installing to C:\ on the Windows host. So there's no way as far as I know to get these shared back to the Mac host right?
    – Matthew Lund
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 22:22
  • The executables won't really benefit from being on the Mac FS anyway. Can you configure it to put its data files (configs, whatever else you personally need to manipulate) on a different drive? That would be the determining factor.
    – JRobert
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 22:43
  • In this case, no. It's one of those programs (an SDK in this case) that insists on a certain directory.
    – Matthew Lund
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 22:53
  • Then you might try 1) symbolic links - howtogeek.com/howto/16226/… - and see if your application will accept them; and if not, then 2), a continuously running process (batch file or .exe) on XP (since the host OS can't see into the guest) that watches for changes in either the C: or Z: folders and copies the latest changes from one to the other. This is a HACK and needs to be done carefully to avoid loops, race conditions, or stepping on the application's toes in who-knows-what ways. It's doable but it won't be pretty!
    – JRobert
    Commented Mar 11, 2012 at 23:11

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