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The Origins of DS_store (2006)

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Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#51

Post by dmicah »

dylan604 wrote: post #46
netsharc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall seeing CD-ROMs that had both Mac and Windows software on it, and depending on which OS it was mounted on, it would show the Windows EXE or the Mac app... I wonder how that's done. I'm guessing there was a clever trick so files on both filesystems share the same data (e.g. if the program/game had a movie, it would only store the bytes of the movie once but its addressable as a file on each filesystem), but th…

There were also the audio CDs that had data on them. Audio CD players would just play the audio, but a CD-ROM could access both. Some had apps that were games that would play the audio portion for the game. If you want to know about the different types of CDs, you'll want to know about the various colors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Books

Some Playstation 1 were setup to also play the game soundtrack if you put them in an audio CD player.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#53

Post by sweetjuly »

worstspotgain wrote: post #41
kzrdude wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resource fork used to contain all the stuff you could edit with ResEdit (good old times!) right? Icons, various gui resources, could be text and translation assets too. For example Escape Velocity plugins used custom resource types and a ResEdit plugin made them easy to edit there.

A lot of Classic Mac apps just used the resource fork to store all their data. It was basically used as a Berkeley DB, except the keys were limited to a 32-bit OSType plus a 16-bit integer, and performance was horrible. But it got the job done when the files were small, had low on-disk overhead, and was ridiculously easy to deploy. Once you pushed an app beyond the level of usage the developer had performed in their…

NSUserDefaults, the modern programmer's fork DB :)

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#54

Post by kccqzy »

pseudalopex wrote: post #33
pkaye wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's done as part of xattr, or extended attributes. It's a very flexible system. For example you can add comments to a file so they are indexed by Spotlight.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#55

Post by EvanAnderson »

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...

NTFS ACLs (aka file permissions) are stored in alternate data streams.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#57

Post by rnts08 »

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...

Very commonly used to hide malware and other things you don't want the average user or windows admin to find.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#58

Post by dada78641 »

> Back in 1999 I was the technical lead for the Mac OS X Finder at Apple. At that time the Finder code base was some 8 years old and had reached the end of its useful life. Making any changes to it require huge engineering effort, and any changes usually broke two or three seemingly unrelated features. For Mac OS X we decided to rewrite the Finder from scratch.

Not that I don't appreciate your work from back then, but as a longtime daily Mac user I cannot wait for the day that this is done once again. The Finder has so many bizarre quirks and it's so slow to proliferate updates that it's just embarrassing. Not to mention it's actually capable of locking up waiting for network access in some circumstances.

I don't know what the Finder source code looks like today but I bet it's a similar kind of hell project as the Classic Finder was back then when they first rewrote it, considering how reluctant they are to do anything to it.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#59

Post by nullindividual »

dmicah wrote: post #51
dylan604 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were also the audio CDs that had data on them. Audio CD players would just play the audio, but a CD-ROM could access both. Some had apps that were games that would play the audio portion for the game. If you want to know about the different types of CDs, you'll want to know about the various colors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Books

Some Playstation 1 were setup to also play the game soundtrack if you put them in an audio CD player.

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries (for PC) was the same way. Rocking soundtrack. Beautiful game, provided you had a Voodoo 2.

Re: The Origins of DS_store (2006)

#60

Post by wsc981 »

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.

I never quite understand why the Finder gets so much hate. Personally I think it’s quite ok. I especially like columns navigation, quite effective for me to get around.

It does make me wonder though, how do you feel about System 7.0 Finder?

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