OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

19 Nov 2001

...
  -----Original Message-----
 From: gwynp(a)artware.qc.ca [mailto:gwynp@artware.qc.ca] 
...
  You're best bet is to buy a Mac Addict or other
magazine that 
 has a CD-ROM
 (you do have a CD drive?).  Older Macs don't "boot-strap" 
 very well.  Yes,
 you can get a SEA (self-extracting archive) of Stuffit, but 
 it won't do 
 you much good.  Mac OS has 2 forks per file.  One for data, the other
 for code.  When you download a file or when you copy a file from a PC
 formated disk everything goes into the data fork.  Doing something
 equivalent to "chmod +x file.sea" is impossible on Mac OS without an
 external program, like say Stuffit.  *sigh*  If you are 
 lucky, you'll have
 a recent version of Mac OS which includes Stuffit. 
Well, if you'd like a home-baked solution (possibly home half-baked. :), you
can write Macintosh 1.4 meg disks on a peesee type machine (or unix box).

I can possibly provide code for an hfs loadable module for linux, and a
rather generic set of c programs that will read/write mac filesystems.

With that software, and an archive that you can extract the stuffit binary
from, you'd be able to write the proper resource fork to the disk as well,
and have the macintosh know what to do with your program.

...
  I find this to be one of the most incredible
"features" of 
 Mac OS.  Apart
 from that, as long as you have a real computer nearby, using 
 a Mac isn't
 that bad. 
I feel the need to defend this "feature."  In so much as this allows you to
separate data from code, this is a wonderful idea.  The problem, really, is
that apple left their o/s unfinished, and didn't include the proper
utilities to manipulate these things that the system depends so heavily
upon.

Regards,

Chris

Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl
Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'