Re: [NTLK] Newton packages versus OS X packages

From: Michael J. Hußmann (michael_at_michael-hussmann.de)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2005 - 17:08:50 PST


David M. Ensteness (denstene_at_mac.com) wrote:

> What you said is true but misleading itself. Resource forks do not
> *have* to have things like type and creator codes in them, but
> traditionally they seem to be kept there.

They were never kept there ... Maybe you are referring to an
application's signature -- that used to be stored within the BNDL
resource. Nowadays under Mac OS X, it still could be, but usually it is
stored within the PkgInfo file within an application package.

So when MS Word declares its creator code to be "MSWD", that's its
signature and stored within its BNDL resource -- traditionally anyway.
But when a Word document has a creator code of "MSWD" and a type code of
"W8BN" (if I remember correctly), that those two codes are meta data are
neither part of the resource fork nor the data fork.

> its very strange that a file which loses its resource
> fork *typically* can't be correctly identified ...

Of course it would be strange. But it doesn't happen. When a file loses
its resource fork, it may lose vital data (if there is vital data stored
within the resource fork), or it may not (because the resource fork is
empty or contains nothing really important). It will not lose its meta
data, though. Just try it: delete a file's resource fork and check it's
type and creator code -- they will still exist, unharmed and unchanged.

> Oh? Try copying Photoshop 6 via FTP from one volume to another and then
> see if it will open ... or try to do that to a Classic Macintosh
> installer file, or many other things.

All I was saying was that Newton package files have no resource fork, so
nothing's lost when the resource fork isn't copied. Obviously this
doesn't generalize to files which do have a resource fork, such as the
Photoshop 6 app.

On the other hand, any FTP client worth its salt (Interarchy, Fetch etc.)
will notice this and package both forks and associated meta data within a
MacBinary II stream, so again nothing is lost. Upon download, both forks
and meta data will be restored.

- Michael

Michael J. Hussmann

E-mail: michael_at_michael-hussmann.de
WWW (personal): http://michael-hussmann.de
WWW (professional): http://digicam-experts.de

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