On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Geoff Canyon wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, David Bovill wrote:
>
> > Thanks Kevin...
> >
> > so what do you think, is it technically possible for a PC or Unix system
> > to save this invisible Mac-specific information, so that it magically
> > appears on the Mac without having to do or use anything else? Still can't
> > see the technical problem with Metacard building this cross-platform
> > support feature in.
> >
> > Scott?
>
> On 3/15/00 9:36 AM, Scott Raney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >There are no other ways. The MacOS file system has three places where
> >it can store information in a file, and DOS and UNIX only have one.
> >And there's no way to make one thing do the work of three.
>
> I know it doesn't help now, but MacOS X will end this. Its foundation is
> UNIX, and as such, it supports only one place, as do DOS and other UNIX
> OSes. Instead, MacOS X will use the concept I think they call a package,
> which is really a folder pretending to be a file. The folder can contain
> multiple files, but not appear to be anything other than a single
> document/application to an ordinary user. That way it can store any
> number of different pieces and formats of information, without being
> incompatible.
>
> Scott, will it be a big deal for MetaCard to support packages? I don't
> know if any other UNIX (besides NeXTStep/OpenStep) uses this concept.
This is roughly equivalent to my option #1: hide the files. It
remains to be seen how well this is really going to work, which
probably mostly depends on how many Unix people come to Mac OS X and
expect it to work like other Unix systems. For example, if you run
"grep somestring somefile" it ain't going to look in that file for
that string, which is something serious Unix users aren't going to be
too happy about.
We're just starting down the road to trying to integrate the routines
common to the other Unix platforms with Mac OS X, and so far it's not
looking like it's going to be easy. Better only count on MetaCard on
Mac OS X being MetaCard on a better Mac OS, which is apparently how
Apple looks at it. It may eventually turn out to be the best of both
worlds, but it may turn out that Apple is successful and the Unix
aspect of Mac OS X will be vestigial, if it's available at all...
Regards,
Scott
> gc
>
>
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********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
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