On Mar 16, 2005, at 3:39 PM, John Francis wrote:
Call it what you will.
Names are important.
There's something on a Mac that lets you bring up a window on a folder, and which shows you the files in that folder, together with showing you various file attributes (which, in the case we are discussing, include creation dates).
You don't seem to understand how Mac OS X operates. You shouldn't pose as an expert on it if you don't care about the names of things or the collaboration of independent components.
If it shows a date of 31 Dec 1903 for files on a CF card written in a digital camera, it's broken code, because it isn't implementing FAT correctly.
Arguing about what it is called doesn't change the fact that there's a problem somewhere in the Mac software.
The Finder's list views inconsistent with its Inspector views, but the problem is not really in the Finder. It's in the underlying routines used to pull the creation date from FAT file systems, which are UNIX utility components. However, this "optional" field should be properly filled in by the camera in the FAT volume when it writes the data. I repeat, it's stupid to make the Created date an "optional" field.
If you use any of the utility applications to transfer your files from FAT to a Mac OS volume (like iView Media Pro, Image Capture, etc), they properly populate the Created date with the Modified date as reported by the underlying utility. For the instance of an image file on an SD or CF card, this is perfectly valid.
Godfrey
