The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Mark Lennox, 18-06-2002:

>Does anybody know if it is impossible for a PC to read the 'resource' fork
>of Mac files? I dont mean is there an application that will do it, I mean
>can a PC even 'see' the resource fork?

If you get a mac file in e.g. stuffed form (stuffit format), it is 
completely "intact" and so potentially contains a resource fork (not 
all mac files have resource forks -- typically data files don't and 
applications do).

[Note: when sending files unpacked through email for instance, and 
using uuencode as the transfer mechanism, the resource fork gets 
stripped off -- hence the previous proviso for using some sort of 
archiver which is the safest way to guarantee complete transfers 
through whichever medium, be it internet or hardware like CDs and 
such.]

Since it's all in one big file anyway and not something like two 
separate files, the answer must be yes: some of the bytes of the file 
are what the mac calls resource-fork, and others are data-fork.  You 
just won't be able to access the resource fork in any meaningful way 
I suppose.  The PC will just see it as one big file which has no 
particular meaning to it.  There won't be a way for the PC to 
distinguish between resource-fork bytes and data-fork bytes.

Is there a particular reason you ask this?

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html