On Mar 17, 2005, at 12:43 PM, John Francis wrote:
Godfrey DiGiorgi mused:
On Mar 17, 2005, at 11:06 AM, John Francis wrote:
If they choose to interpret it literally, then it should be the date that would correspond to day zero in the DOS epoch. But it isn't. Instead, we get the date that corresponds to day zero (or day -1?) in the Mac epoch.
I disagree that that's an error. Mac OS users are used to the OS
showing the proper garbage date on zero values. Is the camera a Windows
device? No. Who knows what its "epoch" is?
It's defined. It's in the FAT specs. It's really not difficult.
It's stupid to put a junk value in a created date field and to make
filling the field optional in the file system. That's the real bug. And
I won't change that opinion.
Fine. But's it's not a "junk" value - that's your interpretation. Continue shouting "Mac is perfect - the rest of the world is wrong" for as long as you like.
I have certainly not said Mac is perfect. As I said, the Finder's Inspector and List views are inconsistent, and the reason is the different code used to interpret the values. I feel the Inspector's '-' display is more accurate.
However, why should the "0" date case be handled differently based upon a file system stupidity? Anything that does not put a proper value in should be handled in the context of the runtime environment's defaults. That is the expected behavior, as FAT file systems can be read by many different OSes. Handling it any other way is creating a false impression that the data input in this field is meaningful.
Godfrey
