At 07:29 -0700 9/30/06, Bruce Van Allen wrote:
>Maybe Peter Lewis of Interarchy fame could enlighten us.

I'm sure he can.  Modern versions of Interarchy have dropped automatic 
conversion of HFS files to MacBinary (*.bin) format when asked. MacBinary 
combines the resource and data forks while also adding metadata such as 
creation times, type, and creator from the directory structure of the file 
system.

Folks who enjoy old Macs can get the service back by using an older version of 
Interarchy. Good old Stuffit Expander will decode MacBinary when it is 
encountered. OS neXt disk images do something similar but they lack the 
compression inherent in DiskCopy of old. It was once difficult to pass a Mac 
application file through a Windoze machine. It's now equally difficult in a 
modern Mac. Some call it Gresham's law.

There was a time when FTP servers actually recognized MacBinary as a stored 
item. I think most that did were owned by Apple and used around Infinite Loop.

An interesting enhancement to BBEdit would be to include MacBinary conversion 
in its ftp services for the sake of those of us who would really like to 
preserve the resource fork that does exist if the secret request is activated. 
If you occasionally open BBEdit-ed documents in MPW on a classic Mac you would 
find it valuable.

Better, of course, would be a widely recognized standard for inclusion of 
relocatable metadata in file systems. At 71 I think I shall not wait around for 
it.

Aliens from MPW might like to add this to their *rc files.
alias files ls -lF \*/..namedfork/data \*/..namedfork/rsrc

-- 

Applescript syntax is like English spelling:
Roughly, though not thoroughly, thought through.

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