Re: Resource Fork - is this a good use/the right thing to do?
Re: Resource Fork - is this a good use/the right thing to do?
- Subject: Re: Resource Fork - is this a good use/the right thing to do?
- From: "Sean McBride" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:12:59 -0400
- Organization: Rogue Research
On 4/23/08 1:21 AM, Daniel DeCovnick said:
>I'm writing an application that opens particular kinds of files,
>parses them, displays an editable graphical representation of the
>contents of a file, and saves the results of the changes to the file.
>However, some graphical changes don't result in changes to the
>original file, yet those changes need to be saved - a little bit
>analogous to the Finder saving the positions of icons in a window, but
>not changing the files themselves. This seems like a perfect use of
>package documents (a la .rtfd), except for one problem: the files I'm
>opening aren't mine, and should remain openable in other applications,
>so I can't wrap them up. I'd also really like to avoid making changes
>to the files themselves, at least the portions that their normal
>programs read.
The Resource fork has been used for a long time for exactly that
purpose. As others have said, extended attributes are another
possibility. Both risk being clobbered by poorly written tools.
Personally, I think a resource is a better idea. They're actually less
likely to get clobbered as they have been around longer (you could even
copy them to a Classic system, or 10.0, etc.). The Resource Manager is
not deprecated and is even available in 64 bit (unlike other parts of
Carbon). NDResourceFork provides a nice Cocoa wrapper over the C APIs. See:
<http://homepage.mac.com/nathan_day/pages/source.xml>
--
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng email@hidden
Rogue Research www.rogue-research.com
Mac Software Developer Montréal, Québec, Canada
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