7 ms·
This reminds me of some of the tricks Apple used to pull with the resource and data forks on the classic Mac OS. Like, a file could have plain text in the data
by amyjess 10y ago
This reminds me of some of the tricks Apple used to pull with the resource and data forks on the classic Mac OS.
Like, a file could have plain text in the data fork and formatting instructions in the resource fork, so an application that can only handle plain text can just read the data fork, and something that knows how to deal with rich text can read the resource fork and apply the formatting.
While the old Mac OS had its problems, it was full of brilliant strokes of design genius like this, and I'm still kinda saddened that these little tricks are almost entirely gone.
- jandrese 10y agoYou could in fact do exactly the kind of formatting in the article on an old mac for exactly this reason. The formatting data was stuffed into the resource fork which the compiler was free to ignore but could be used by the editor. Interesting sidenote, Windows has supported resource forks since the days of NT, but the only time I ever saw them used was when virus writers were trying to hide their payload. Even Mac files brought over to Windows tended to have their resource forks stripped out and stuffed into some cryptically named directory. Ultimately, the resource forks on Windows were such a forgotten feature that they couldn't safely be used, because you never knew when a user might try to compress a file with an oblivious compression tool or send it via some old DOS program and strip out the resource fork by accident. They are the kind of clever feature that only works if everybody agrees to honor them, and become a total nightmare otherwise.
- jloughry 10y agoIf anyone else is looking for this, Windows calls its version of the technology Alternate Data Stream (ADS).
- gfaure 10y agoHow did it handle the contents of the data fork getting out of sync with the contents of the resource fork? Or was the plain text "view" of the data read-only?