Re: Wanting to Rid Files of Mac Resource Forks

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <41tb1j$jr5@hydra.acs.ttu.edu>,
Captain Harlock <Z5D31@ttacs3.ttu.edu> wrote:
> 
> I have the Optimizer (by SoftDisk), but it doesn't remove Mac resforks, just
> GS. Is there a utility out there (PD or otherwise) that can strip Mac
> resforks out of flat files like GIF and MOD?

If you are running on a IIgs, there should be a few programs that can
do this.  In particular, any ProDOS-16 copy program written before
GS/OS was released will only copy the data fork of the file, leaving
the resource fork behind.

The most obvious example of this is Apple's own Finder versions that
were supplied on System 3.0 through 4.0.  You have to boot GS/OS, then
you can launch the old copy of Finder to copy the file.

Note that it has to be a ProDOS-16 copy program, and you have to boot
GS/OS.  A ProDOS-8 copy program will not be able to cope with the
resource fork being present.  A new enough GS/OS copy program will
know that it is supposed to copy the resource fork as well as the data
fork.

Also note that if you boot into ProDOS-16, you probably cannot access
a file with a resource fork at all (as with ProDOS-8).  You must be
running System 4.0 or later (GS/OS) to be able to access files with
resource forks.

APW 1.1 had a utility called "duplicate" that could be told to copy
just one fork of a file.  (The shell's own "copy" command didn't know
about the resource fork, so it would always copy the data fork only.)


Regarding Mac resource forks vs IIgs resource forks: they are
physically stored on the disk in the same manner.  The only difference
is the organisation of the data within the resource fork (and it is
VERY different).  Copy programs don't deal with the internals of the
forks, so they handle either type of file equally well.

The IIgs Resource Manager toolset can only handle IIgs resource forks.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand