This is simply historical. Macintosh files have always had two forks, one
for data, and one for resources. Palm OS was built using Macs, and that's
also where CodeWarrior started. Palm OS uses the resource fork of Macintosh
files to store Palm resources. A post-linker called PalmRez then converts
these Macintosh resources into corresponding Palm resources. For the PC
version of CodeWarrior, a fairly direct port was done, exposing some of this
Macintosh history. There is no inherent reason why both the data and
resource forks couldn't be merged into a single file using some particular
format. Instead, a separate folder was used. This actually makes it easier
to move projects between the platforms because there are already tools out
there that know how to deal with the resource.frk folder. In fact, if you
drag a file from a Mac file system to a PC floppy (on a Mac), it'll set up a
resource.frk folder for you. It's also convenient to be able to use
Macintosh resource editing applications when developing Palm apps on the
Mac. I'll bet you wish Palm started out using a text format for their
resources rather than piggy backing off the Mac tools!
--
Peter Epstein
--
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