Re: hfs files

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Thu, 06 May 1999 19:41:58 GMT, Randy Shackelford
<shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>Sorting directories is a non issue since HFS directories are B trees and
>file entries are always alphabetical. The rest are easy to get around
>if you have a Mac with Norton handy.

Ick.  It is a good thing that we can't use HFS to boot otherwise we'd
have to rename all our inits if we wanted to load them in a certain
order.

>It could be tied to volume size. I have a 200 mb HFS volume and the speed
>is acceptable.

See my reply to Supertimer.  It would seem that a system add-on I
recently removed was causing the problem.  Which one, I'm not sure.
Things seem to be working much better now.

>It would require an entire new file system since so much stuff in ProDOS
>is hard coded to 32 mb volumes.

There are a number of places that block numbers are stored as 2 bytes
but changing that to 3 bytes and modifying the existing code to use 3
bytes isn't an insurmountable problem.  Allowing files larger than 16
MB and allowing longer filenames with less naming restrictions would
start to get a little more difficult, though.

Personally, I'd be happy with just larger volumes sizes.  Other
improvements would be nice but I can live without them.

>I'd lean toward making HFS utilities and,
>if people were to reach the point of writing FSTs, making a faster HFS.

Regardless of whether we get larger ProDOS volumes, I think it would
be nice to have HFS utilities.  Sure would make my IIgs that much more
flexible.

>There would be no point in making a new file system which no other platform
>could understand when there's a perfectly good (and interoperable) system
>already around. Plus that could be easier to implement than an FST for an
>entirely different file system.

Having a simple, reliable, fast, optimized file system would be a good
thing in my opinion.  GS/OS is really nice in that is allows us to use
multiple file systems.  If file sharing with other machines is a
concern, make sure you have a drive or at least a partition formatted
for use with other machines.  Personally, in the case of sharing with
a Mac, I think it would be easier to set up a network and do file
sharing that way.

The way I see this FST project is that extending the capabilities of
the ProDOS FST, either by patching or creating a new FST, is just a
learning process.  Once we can do that, then we can turn our attention
to fixing the bugs in the HFS FST, making the MS-DOS FST read/write
and support FAT32 and long filenames and maybe even allow us to create
NTFS or unix FSTs as well.  I see it being a good thing all the way
around.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
|                    Delphi Apple II Forums Web Pages                    |
| A2: http://www.delphi.com/apple2   A2Pro: http://www.delphi.com/a2pro  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   HyperCard IIgs course now in session in the A2Pro forum on Delphi
        Learn to Program in GSoft BASIC course now in session