On 4/23/08 1:21 AM, Daniel DeCovnick said:

>I'm writing an application that opens particular kinds of files,
>parses them, displays an editable graphical representation of the
>contents of a file, and saves the results of the changes to the file.
>However, some graphical changes don't result in changes to the
>original file, yet those changes need to be saved - a little bit
>analogous to the Finder saving the positions of icons in a window, but
>not changing the files themselves. This seems like a perfect use of
>package documents (a la .rtfd), except for one problem: the files I'm
>opening aren't mine, and should remain openable in other applications,
>so I can't wrap them up. I'd also really like to avoid making changes
>to the files themselves, at least the portions that their normal
>programs read.

The Resource fork has been used for a long time for exactly that
purpose.  As others have said, extended attributes are another
possibility.  Both risk being clobbered by poorly written tools.
Personally, I think a resource is a better idea.  They're actually less
likely to get clobbered as they have been around longer (you could even
copy them to a Classic system, or 10.0, etc.).  The Resource Manager is
not deprecated and is even available in 64 bit (unlike other parts of
Carbon).  NDResourceFork provides a nice Cocoa wrapper over the C APIs.  See:
<http://homepage.mac.com/nathan_day/pages/source.xml>

--
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng                 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rogue Research                        www.rogue-research.com
Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada

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