Tired of mounting those bfs or other format virtual images from the command-line? This little howto will show you how to mount these images with a nice double click using the handy ImageMounter and some BeOS FileTypes magic!

Firstly, a big thanks to the author of ImageMounter Maurice Michalski for this wonderful app. Now to get started, I think an image would be in order..so here it is.....

Now from the image you can see that I've opened FileTypes ( BeOS Menu -> Preferences -> FileTypes ) and the Application Type window for ImageMounter (which you should have downloaded already btw :) ) which you can access with the FileType Tracker add-on ( right click the ImageMounter binary -> Add-ons -> FileType ). Now that's done let's get into it.

1. In the FileTypes window click the Add... button. Choose application for the group, vImage (or VirtualImage if you like) for the Type name and vimage for the Internal name. Click Add, then browse the tree on the left, clicking application-> then vImage.
2. Now you can add a pretty icon for virtual images, and some extensions like .iso, .img, .be, and any others you can think of, also adding the upper case equivalents is a good idea too. You can also add a poetic description if you like.
3. The important part is to set ImageMounter as the Preferred Application for vImages so click the Select... button and browse to where you installed ImageMounter (e.g. /boot/apps/ImageMounter ) and select the ImageMounter binary.If it complains choose select. Close the FileTypes preferences panel.
4. Now in the ImageMounter Application Type window click on any "Supported Types" in there and remove them with the Remove button. Then click Add... and choose application-> vImage , then Add. Save this by pressing alt-s while the windows is in focus and close it.
5. Congrats! You can now double click any iso/image file to mount it. Hooray!

With an image mounted you can edit/change/delete/add files to images just like any mounted partition. Say you want to put in a patch to an image. This will allow you to add the patch and then burn it to it's media (CD/floppy/whatever) Say you spent all night downloading that .iso of whatnot and want to see what is on it without putting it on a partition, try ImageMounter. Great app still! How can I get this page to fit on a page width?

P.S You can now mount more than one Image at a time with ImageMounter! Hooray! A special thanks to the author Maurice for fixing this :-)