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The Origins of DS_store (2006)

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Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#31

Post by Someone »

ggm wrote: post #2

Aside from this file, the "fork" concept of Mac file systems caused some wtf moments. Fork not being fork() but being the two-pronged idea in that file system, both a resource and a data component existed as pair. One metadata and one the file contents. In Unix, the metadata was in the directory block inode, and wasn't bound to the file in a formalism uniquely, it had to be represented by structure in tar, or cpio or…

> the two-pronged idea in that file system, both a resource and a data component existed as pair. One metadata and one the file contents.

Application metadata describing what file types an application could open, what icons to use for those file types if they matched the application’s creator code was stored in the resource fork of the application, but file metadata never was stored in the resource fork. File types, creator codes, lock, invisible, bozo, etc. bits always were stored in the file system.

See for example the description of the MFS disk format at https://wiki.osdev.org/MFS#File_Directory_Blocks

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#32

Post by jwells89 »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #12

Not to mention that it's an obnoxious and incompetent design. Look at the fact that Mac OS litters every other computer it visits with turds, for its own (and in fact only one user's) benefit. It's doubly stupid because the next browsing Mac that comes along trounces the previous one's turd. If Apple wanted to store view settings for remote volumes (or even local volumes), the competent design would have been to stor…

I can see the appeal for removable media, at least. It’s pretty common for those to have only a single user toting them around between home/work/school and for that case it makes a lot of sense to store that info on the media so settings stick across different machines. It probably made even more sense back when removable media was the norm for data transfer because network access was spotty or slow.

It really should be turned off by default on network volumes though.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#33

Post by pseudalopex »

pkaye wrote: post #7
ggm wrote: post #2

Aside from this file, the "fork" concept of Mac file systems caused some wtf moments. Fork not being fork() but being the two-pronged idea in that file system, both a resource and a data component existed as pair. One metadata and one the file contents. In Unix, the metadata was in the directory block inode, and wasn't bound to the file in a formalism uniquely, it had to be represented by structure in tar, or cpio or…

NTFS has alternate data streams. I think its hardly ever used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_stream_(AD...

The article said most browsers mark downloaded files.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#34

Post by al_borland »

Waterluvian wrote: post #15

DS Store seems so unfortunate. Yes it serves a purpose. Yes you can work around it in various ways. But the reality is that it’s basically proliferated file litter to 99% of people who come across it. It’s uncharacteristically un-Apple in terms of UX polish. Growing up with both System 7.5 / OSX, and windows machines, the Macs never seemed inclined to make me see extraneous files, filetypes, and other “how the comput…

For those who live their whole life within Apple's walls, they will never see .DS_Store files, unless they use the Terminal. Finder (with hidden files shown) doesn't even show them anymore.

It is very ugly when files are shared from a Mac to people on Windows though. I think it gives a bad first impression for anyone who might be thinking of transitioning to the Mac.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#35

Post by FredPret »

actionfromafar wrote: post #13
metadat wrote: post #4

It's worth mentioning how to turn off the creation of .DS_Store files by default while browsing network volumes - otherwise the directory modified timestamps are updated as you browse using the Finder, which is Just Plain Terrible. https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/lvju40/comment/gpc8i...

If you run Samba you can also configure Samba to just ignore such creations.

For nginx and WebDAV:

https://gist.github.com/jirutka/5380770

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#36

Post by threeseed »

Wingy wrote: post #20
threeseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the competent design would have been to store them locally (and per user) in a central location on the machine doing the browsing Not sure but it could be the case that when you mount a network drive there isn't a stable identifier that can be used to track it.

Store a single .DS_Store in the root of the disk that stores either the reference or all of the data for that filesystem?

Users rarely mount network drives as root so not sure how this would work.

Also the conflict resolution to support concurrent updates would be crazy.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#38

Post by nathan_douglas »

al_borland wrote: post #34
Waterluvian wrote: post #15

DS Store seems so unfortunate. Yes it serves a purpose. Yes you can work around it in various ways. But the reality is that it’s basically proliferated file litter to 99% of people who come across it. It’s uncharacteristically un-Apple in terms of UX polish. Growing up with both System 7.5 / OSX, and windows machines, the Macs never seemed inclined to make me see extraneous files, filetypes, and other “how the comput…

For those who live their whole life within Apple's walls, they will never see .DS_Store files, unless they use the Terminal. Finder (with hidden files shown) doesn't even show them anymore. It is very ugly when files are shared from a Mac to people on Windows though. I think it gives a bad first impression for anyone who might be thinking of transitioning to the Mac.

They pop up in code repositories too, depending on contents and whether the engineer in question noticed it.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#39

Post by yellow_postit »

Finder remains one of those apps I still can’t make effective use of. Windows File Explorer for all its warts and changes still “just makes sense” to my brain vs how finder lays things out and expects you to browse.

I’ve long since moved to command line or dual pane explorers but it’s something that makes me pause every time I do find myself in Finder for some reason.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#40

Post by eek2121 »

yellow_postit wrote: post #39

Finder remains one of those apps I still can’t make effective use of. Windows File Explorer for all its warts and changes still “just makes sense” to my brain vs how finder lays things out and expects you to browse. I’ve long since moved to command line or dual pane explorers but it’s something that makes me pause every time I do find myself in Finder for some reason.

Oh boy, Windows does the same thing (regarding hidden files to sort out FS stuff), but they hide it (just like Apple). We WSL2 users found out the hard way and Microsoft refuses to offer a solution. Relevant issue: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/7456

Apologies for my post getting snipped, The latest iOS beta keeps randomly eating my text. Apple is aware.

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