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The original Mac really had something with the type and creator codes. Applications could register to open a type, I think it would default to the creator. Of
by wiredfool 5y ago
The original Mac really had something with the type and creator codes.
Applications could register to open a type, I think it would default to the creator.
Of course, that wound up with things like resource forks, and that didn't really play well with anyone else's file system.
- Someone 5y agoTypes and creator codes were stored in the file system, not in resource forks. What was stored in a resource fork (of each application) was the declaration “I am [four byte creator code]; I can open these [four byte file types]. That’s the information that the Finder built its databases from (https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Grand_Unified_Model_The_Finder.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...) That easily could have been moved into the file proper (as AppleSingle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleSingle_and_AppleDouble_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleSingle_and_AppleDouble_fo...) did, but another (and IMO better for this purpose) option would have been to move that info into a special code segment in the data fork (in Unix parlor; old-style Mac OS programs stored their code in code segments in the resource fork) Also, I think Mac OS still uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier, which are an improvement over file types and creator codes (you can, for example, express the fact that every html file is a text file with it)
- wiredfool 5y agoYah, details are hazy, it's been a long while since I was truly annoyed at this when it happened.