Subject: Re: On Mac: How is file type and creator determined?

From: "Tom Watson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 15:24:07 -0800

On Wed, 10 May 2000 17:10:50 -0400 (EDT), [email-masked] wrote:
> --On 5/10/00 3:46 PM -0500 Brian Bergstrand <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > The type/creator comes from the Desktop Database that the Finder
> > maintains.
> 
> No, the type/creator is part of the directory entry for the file.  The 
> Desktop Database is maintained by the Finder only to associate data files 
> with their applications (so that double-clicking does what you expect) and 
> icons.
> 

But, for the purposes of this discussion (relating to netatalk), the
type/creator information IS contained in the ".AppleDouble" directory
with the resource fork information.  The specification for "AppleDouble"
contains the file format.  There are utilities for a Mac that quite
easily modify the type/creator information.  My preference is "snitch",
which does it thru an expanded "Get Info" interface.
-- 
Tom Watson         Generic short signature
[email-masked]     (I'm at home now)

---

From: "Donald L. Nash" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 09:24:45 -0500

--On 5/10/00 3:24 PM -0800 Tom Watson <[email-masked]> wrote:

> with the resource fork information.

True, but the AppleDouble format is designed only for the representation of 
Mac files on foreign filesystems that don't support the semantics required 
by MacOS.  It was simply a matter of convenience to put all the 
"Mac-special" stuff, i.e. the resource fork and the Finder data, into one 
file.  That doesn't mean they are related or that the Finder data is 
somehow part of the resource fork, only that they happen to be kept in the 
same place in the special case of using AppleDouble to store them on a 
foreign filesystem.

                                ++Don