Re: Getting files from a pc => mac => IIGS and/or a IIe

[Greg Buchner <apple22@mn.rr.com>]

In article <asKdnadFsOHMKgrenZ2dnUVZ_vidnZ2d@comcast.com>,
 "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

> Greg Buchner wrote:
> >  "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>Frankly, avoiding forks with a Mac is non-intuitive--as are forks
> >>themselves, since so few file systems use them.  The concept of
> >>associating meta-data with a file is a good one, but it becomes
> >>quite intrusive on the Mac, particularly when it is only trying
> >>to "preserve" attributes that it invented when the non-forked file
> >>was copied to the Mac in the first place.  It seems like it would
> >>have been a good idea to add a "non-essential" attribute to forks,
> >>or at least a "fork free" attribute to a (ProDOS or PC) volume.  ;-)
> > 
> > 
> > Yea, but from the Mac point of view (pre-OS X), you shouldn't have to 
> > avoid them.  They're a natural part of the system and why would you need 
> > to use anything else.  ;-)  With OS X, they've done away with the need 
> > for resource forks, so naturally we've joined the Windows world of 
> > thousands of little files being installed on the hard drive...
> 
> But that mindset should have shifted when support for "alien"
> filesystems was added.  Compatibility with the PC was seen as
> a "must have" by Apple in the 90s.  The real rub came about
> because ProDOS *does* have support for resource forks, even
> though it is little used.

It did work differently with Windows though as when writing to a PC 
disk, it would put the resource fork into a separate file so you can 
easily access the data part.  Making things easy for Apple II people 
definitely wouldn't have been part of the mindset of the higher-ups at 
Apple during that time.  I'm sure they looked at the file system 
compatibility mostly for getting Apple II people to transfer stuff over 
to their new Mac.

Greg B.

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