InputManagers No More Under 10.5

My dad sent me this article that’s up at ARS Technica about 10.5 Leopard. It mentions that the InputManager control that exists now under 10.4.x will be no more as of 10.5.x. This system is a way in for software developers to “hack” the OS and add input for many Apple softwares. Luckily APE is not the same as InputManager, but Unsanity’s other main system for the OS (SCR) is an InputManager. I have a small amount of these InputManagers, all of which I LOVE and want to have under 10.5 Leopard as well as 10.4. Aside from SCR I have the SpotliightInputManager to import Google results to Spotlight searches, SafariStand to extend Safari, and all the Ecamm components (“DockStar” for mail, “Download Comment” for Safari, and “iGlasses” for iSight input). As I said, NONE of these I want to lose but it seems inevitable that we all will after we install 10.5.x on our macs. Below is what they say about the topic of InputManagers in the article:

“One more tip we got regarding Leopard, is that InputManager plugins are no longer allowed. That’s right… no more little hacks from anybody besides Apple. No more Apple menu hacks. No more Safari plugins. (InputManager is not exactly the same as APE, by the way.) “Apple isn’t really broken up about it since InputManagers were often used for nefarious purposes anyway,” our sources said, but the loss of InputManager control will break a lot of shareware and commercial software that currently makes use of that control.”

I hope that some of the InputManager apps (especially Ecamm’s) will find a way to create 10.5 specific formats for their tools that currently require the InputManager control.