Re: Write a prefs file
Re: Write a prefs file
- Subject: Re: Write a prefs file
- From: Ric Phillips <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 15:23:25 +1000
Well well well,
I am so glad I put on my asbestos undies this morning. I haven't been flamed
in a while - quite bracing really ;-)
A comment is not an opinion. And the 'recommendation' is Apple's - not mine.
I know Apple still uses the RF - just this morning I was hacking OS X finder
generated resource files.
As for my own views.....
Multi-stream file systems have a lot of advantages. Their main disadvantage
- as with anything advanced - is complexity.
While the RF has offered advantages for the GUI programmer, developers in
can be a tad sloppy about providing adequate preference-interfaces. For
example I wonder why I should have to fire-up res-edit to set up a whole
batch of parameters for Apple Software Restore that seem to me, should be
available to users via the GUI interface for the app. The RF approach is a
minority approach, that thwarts easy porting, modification, and
interoperability. Apple developers can be very idiosyncratic in their use of
the second file stream.
The HFS+ / UFS debate is beyond me at the moment, but I still have some
doubts about BSD Unix running on a non-*nix file system. (I'm more
comfortable navigating the FS in Bash than the Finder.) Can I only access
the resource-fork via the GUI? That would create a bad GUI dependency to my
mind. I'm running a HFS+ install, but I am hoping to trial a UFS install
soon - just to see. I suspect some of the odd behaviour I have noticed with
aliases will come down to the HFS+ / UFS compatibility question. But I am
not for one over the other.
Finally, as AppleScript does not come with any built in support for resource
fork access, and is meant to be a quick and easy glue language. I hardly see
any general productivity justifications for using them, though no doubt
there would be specific times one could argue on the basis of performance.
[There is of course the satisfaction that comes with esoteric know-how ;-) ]
Plain text preferences make much more sense for scripters - especially where
no GUI programming is involved, and under OS X, there are now tools and
standards for managing preferences as data-fork-dwelling text files.
And think how much easier scripting apps would be if none of them tucked
their operational parameters away in arcane resource fork files!
But my overriding opinion on all this is that scripting is a free-for-all
programming domain where the final argument for anything is 'does it work'.
I personally don't use 'preference' files as such, but put all operational
parameters in script objects - for light-weight parsing.
All things are Budda things!
(except any dramatic dialogue written by George Lucas.)
Toodles,
Ric Phillips
Faculty Web Coordinator
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Latrobe University
Room HU3 324
Phone: 9479 2792
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