Blimey, have I started something here? Am slightly under-impressed with this whole external metadata thing, especially if it's some appalling clanking revenant from the older Mac OS that creates annoying Does Not Play Well With Others issues cross-platform.
I don't think it's right to have important data that screws up in this way. Both the Explorer in XP and Finder in OS X can have view data in separate or hidden files, and it's not really intended for cross-platform use, just for tweaking what you see on your own hard disk. That's fine: it's outside the files because it's not part of the files, it's part of how the shell views the files.
Losing data that should be contained in a file because it shows up separately just sounds wrong. I have no idea why the original Mac OS had this dependence on forks, but I haven't heard it's any particular benefit to the users. If what I see is the equivalent of view data, I'll happily ignore it, but if it's part of the file's content it should be _in_ the file. (Thanks very much to all of you who pointed out how to avoid the dot files: if it's Finder stuff to do with displaying files I don't need it at all for the small flash drive.)
The stuff that gets taken to the PC with the DVD burner tends to be audio files about an hour long. Knowing the duration and the bitrate means I can use a rough file-count to keep an idea of when they should be written out to DVD. I keep finding odd dot files getting in the way of that.
Also, I've once or twice had bizarre experiences with strange hidden files, like being unable to copy a file to a flash drive which had plenty of room, and discovering on the XP box that there was a file of the same name, 1K long, with a dot or underline in front of it, presumably stopping the Mac from copying the file.
So I'm slightly confused. What _most_ of you seem to be saying is that the dot files are mere view data from the Finder, and can be deleted with impunity on a flash drive that may be used cross-platform, What some of you seem to be saying is that dot files may contain stuff that should be part of the file, which really sounds to me like flaky behaviour on the Mac's part, if it's true. (I'm probably easily confused, and I'm still grateful, because I now know more than I did, keep up the good work, chaps!) |