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QotD: Resource Forks

Posted March 3rd, 2004 @ 07:43pm by Erik J. Barzeski

Question: Do you miss resource forks for hacking your Mac's UI?

My Answer: Not really. I was quite the ResEdit hacker, but packages are incredibly easy while remaining fairly impervious to newbie's wanderings (and ignorant, unknown attempts at sabotage). Packages allow you to replace TIFFs or sounds, and finding them is usually rather easy ("sendMail.aiff", "STOPicon.tiff", etc.). Plus, for application development, you can't beat packages! B-)

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

7 Comments »

7 Responses to "QotD: Resource Forks"

  1. | Reply Mike Cohen
    Posted 03 Mar 2004 at 8:06pm #

    No. In the beginning I thought getting rid of resource forks was a terrible thing, that we'd be losing a bit of it's "Macness", but that hasn't been the case. Packages are more convenient since special tools aren't needed to edit files inside it.

  2. | Reply argh128
    Posted 03 Mar 2004 at 10:59pm #

    I love packages, but miss the metadata that the resource fork allowed for. I don't miss it that much, but every time I have to add a .zip or change a .3 extension is a time when I miss it the most.

  3. | Reply Anonymous
    Posted 03 Mar 2004 at 11:20pm #

    Filesystem meta data (types and creators) and resource forks are entirely separate issues.

  4. | Reply argh128
    Posted 04 Mar 2004 at 11:22am #

    So they are... But I believe they were stored in the resource fork. Certainly weren't stored in the HFS.

  5. | Reply Jim
    Posted 04 Mar 2004 at 11:44am #

    You believe wrong. Types and creators were not and are not stored in the resource fork. They are stored in the file system with the rest of the meta data (creation date, etc.)

  6. | Reply Jeffrey J. Hoover
    Posted 04 Mar 2004 at 7:41pm #

    I don't miss them either. I find direct manipulation to be far superior. Once I got used to it, that is. 😉

  7. | Reply Caleb Jaffa
    Posted 05 Mar 2004 at 12:48pm #

    I came to Mac in the days of OS X. Which isn't to say I didn't use Macs at school pre X days. I h4x0r3d some things with ResEdit, but I prefer to 'Show Package Contents' and use basic tools, including the Developer Tools from Apple to mess with things if I so desire. I had an Aqua Safari at one time, pretty simple just went into the package and unchecked all the 'has texture' for all of the windows in the NIBs. (after using both I can say that I prefer the brushed metal one)