One thing I didn't implement in the MacOSPlatformUtils is the code for reading XML out of a macintosh resource file. I don't like the convention the original author uses for specifying a URL to a resource and I'd like to find something better - maybe even someone already has defined a standard. If not, I'd like to know how to define one.
Macintosh files have two data streams, or forks. The "data fork" is just like a regular unix or DOS file. The "resource fork" is a structured file in which binary data is stored in variable-sized records, that are accessed by a 32-bit type and 16- bit ID. Resources are very commonly used for storing UI elements, and since it's a system standard format, many resources can be edited by the end user without access to the source code of a program; thus Mac applications were readily localizable before apps on most other platforms were. For example, you might store a menu layout in a resource of type 'MENU' and ID=128. Then you can do: MenuHandle mH = GetMenu( 128 ); InsertMenu( mH ); // mH shows up in the menu bar. There's a freeware tool called ResEdit you could use to customize your menu text with. (It's fun to write graffitti all over one's friend's application user interfaces with ResEdit). Anyway, the original Mac port of the Xerces library depended on the fact that Mac filenames are limited to 32 characters, and could retrieve XML from a resource file through a kludge that goes something like this: file:///This is a really bogus hack, being a very long filename/folder.xml?type='XML '?ID=128 where there is a specific long filename you specify that is matched in the MacOSPlatformUtils. It's really ugly. What I'd prefer is that the community defined a protocol type for resource files, something like this: macresource://harddrive/folder/file.xml?type='XML '?id=128 where "macresource" indicates that it's a resource file URL, and not just a file: URL (or http:), which gets ignored on any platform that does not have resource files (they BeOS also has resource files, perhaps they can share the spec) and we can make some kind of input access method that will read a resource stream. Regards, Mike Crawford GoingWare - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael D. Crawford GoingWare - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow
