Re: Shrinkit.Exe

[Jerry Kindall <kindall@mail.manual.com>]

In article <19990619071322.08650.00000336@ng-fa1.aol.com>, 
supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:

> Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:
> 
> >The usual snag with using an .sea file you download and transfer to 
> >your IIgs is that it arrives as a type TXT file. So, the user will 
> >need to change the filetype to $B3 (S16) in order to execute the 
> >file and obtain GS-ShrinkIt.
> 
> Yes, and if it has passed through a Mac instead of a PC, that text 
> file is going to have a resource fork in it.  Since changing the file 
> type without a program to do it usually means going into 
> Basic.System, a ProDOS 8 program, trying to even access the file is 
> going to result in an error.

Changing a file's type doesn't involve opening it.  You can change the 
type of an extended file fine under ProDOS 8.  That just involves the 
directory entry.

In any case, a file downloaded to a Mac that doesn't have a resource 
fork will not magically have one added just because it's been on a Mac.  
If that were the case, files copied from a Mac to a ProDOS disk would 
always be useless to ProDOS 8 programs.  Obviously this isn't the case.  
Just as on the Apple II, it is perfectly legal for Mac files to lack 
resource forks.

> Thus, why not have a separate archive of GS-Shrinkit just for Mac 
> users that is stored in DiskCopy format (BinHexed to preserve Mac 
> types). This way, when a Mac user downloads the archive, he or she 
> runs it through DiskCopy and the Mac spits out a ProDOS disk with 
> GS-Shrinkit on it, ready to use.

This is still not a bad idea.  Heck, put the 8-bit version of ShrinkIt 
on the disk image while you're at it.

-- 
Jerry Kindall  <mailto:kindall@mail.manual.com>  Technical Writing, etc.
Manual Labor   <http://www.manual.com/>               We Wrote the Book!