5 ms·

that seems fine?

by robomc 6y ago

that seems fine?

lilyball 6y ago
Losing metadata by accident seems fine?
- ltbarcly3 6y ago
  Thumbnails aren't metadata, they are a cache, since they can always be perfectly and deterministically recreated from the data.
  - lilyball 6y ago
    Thumbnails aren’t stored in .DS_Store.
- torstenvl 6y ago
  .DS_Store is not metadata. It is configuration information for Finder. It is not necessary for each computer looking at a set of files to use the same, e.g., icon size.
  - lovelyviking 6y ago
    And if it were a real metadata. Would you then see justified to have some .meta-data file with data?
    - pfranz 6y ago
      That battle was lost long ago and the answer is generally "no." Classic MacOS used Resource Forks. That's where file type was stored instead of using extensions. I believe icons were stored there, as well as other things like where you downloaded it from (a favorite feature of mine in Classic MacOS). Zip files would write that data a special folder. Likely, because this was so problematic in a multi-OS, Internet-enabled world it was ditched for file extensions and encoding everything else inside the file. If you downloaded a file from the Internet that wasn't kept in an archive it would be useless without metadata. Today, macOS uses extended attributes (which were already mentioned) which stashes things like where you downloaded it from, if it's quarantine (first launch warnings), if it's a screen shot, etc. Funny enough, when you place something in the Trash it stores the former location (so you can put it back) in DS_Store. Generally, metadata is either stripped or just plain gets messed up when switching OSes depending on the partition type and tools used to transfer.
      - Someone 6y ago
        “Classic MacOS used Resource Forks. That's where file type was stored instead of using extensions.” That’s incorrect. File type and creator were stored in the file system, not inside files. “I believe icons were stored there” Icons typically were stored in resource forks, but not in the way I think you imply. Applications defined mappings from (type,creator) to icon in their resource forks (which also stored lots of other stuff, including application code). The Finder merged all the mappings needed in the desktop database (each disk had one, stored at the top level of the disk) The icons couldn’t be read from each file because opening each file would slow down the Finder (it was slow enough to start with) and, I guess, it would take way too much disk space (a single 32×32 black and white icon with mask is a whopping 256 bytes. Overhead probably made that a kilobyte on disk. That adds up on a 400kB disk)

that seems fine?

by robomc 6y ago

that seems fine?

lilyball 6y ago

Losing metadata by accident seems fine?

ltbarcly3 6y ago
Thumbnails aren't metadata, they are a cache, since they can always be perfectly and deterministically recreated from the data.
- lilyball 6y ago
  Thumbnails aren’t stored in .DS_Store.
torstenvl 6y ago
.DS_Store is not metadata. It is configuration information for Finder. It is not necessary for each computer looking at a set of files to use the same, e.g., icon size.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  And if it were a real metadata. Would you then see justified to have some .meta-data file with data?
  - pfranz 6y ago
    That battle was lost long ago and the answer is generally "no." Classic MacOS used Resource Forks. That's where file type was stored instead of using extensions. I believe icons were stored there, as well as other things like where you downloaded it from (a favorite feature of mine in Classic MacOS). Zip files would write that data a special folder. Likely, because this was so problematic in a multi-OS, Internet-enabled world it was ditched for file extensions and encoding everything else inside the file. If you downloaded a file from the Internet that wasn't kept in an archive it would be useless without metadata. Today, macOS uses extended attributes (which were already mentioned) which stashes things like where you downloaded it from, if it's quarantine (first launch warnings), if it's a screen shot, etc. Funny enough, when you place something in the Trash it stores the former location (so you can put it back) in DS_Store. Generally, metadata is either stripped or just plain gets messed up when switching OSes depending on the partition type and tools used to transfer.
    - Someone 6y ago
      “Classic MacOS used Resource Forks. That's where file type was stored instead of using extensions.” That’s incorrect. File type and creator were stored in the file system, not inside files. “I believe icons were stored there” Icons typically were stored in resource forks, but not in the way I think you imply. Applications defined mappings from (type,creator) to icon in their resource forks (which also stored lots of other stuff, including application code). The Finder merged all the mappings needed in the desktop database (each disk had one, stored at the top level of the disk) The icons couldn’t be read from each file because opening each file would slow down the Finder (it was slow enough to start with) and, I guess, it would take way too much disk space (a single 32×32 black and white icon with mask is a whopping 256 bytes. Overhead probably made that a kilobyte on disk. That adds up on a 400kB disk)