Re: [Netatalk-admins] Re: DAVE and W2K server = NO HIDDEN FILES?

[Philip E. <ph...@ne...>]

Dan Delaney wrote:

> On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 04:32 PM, Philip Edelbrock wrote:
>
>> That's true, SMB connected clients (except for OS-X clients) won't be 
>> reading/writing/moving/deleting ._ resource files.  I'm not sure how 
>> much of a problem that is?
>
>
> What if some of the Mac users create some files with critical info in 
> the resource forks, and then a Windows user moves those files (thus 
> leaving the resources forks behind). That seems like a problem to me.

Yup, it's been a long outstanding problem.  If directories are renamed 
or moved by a PC, however, there isn't a loss of resource files.

It may be possible for Samba to do some moving of resource files when it 
detects that it has a client which isn't a Mac.  That's still a stretch 
since only the client can really update and use the resource files 
sanely.  I'm afraid that it's simply a problem having Windows clients 
changing and operating on Mac files.  Files which don't store important 
stuff in the resource fork, though, won't be too badly effected (most 
Adobe and Office products, for example).

>> I think ultimately, if you have Windows clients messing with Mac 
>> files, you would have to assume that your resource files will be lost 
>> or at least go out of date.  I beleive that's how existing mixed 
>> environments work.
>
>
> Which brings up a good point. If you're using Mac OS X, do any of the 
> files that you're creating (say with BBEdit, Photoshop, Flash, etc.) 
> actually have anything critical in the resource forks? Obviously if 
> the Windows users aren't having a problem opening and working with 
> those files, there must not be anything critical in those resource 
> forks.  And so if there isn't, then what's the point of even having 
> those hidden files?

Good questions.  Most apps don't store anything important in the 
resource forks.  Apple and Adobe even seem to be migrating away for 
using them(?).  OS-9 application code, icons, FinderInfo metadata (e.g. 
type and creator), some fonts, EPS previews are often only stored in the 
resource files, however, so it is important to keep them when possible.  
Besides, OS-X will puke if you ban those files (by veto'ing the dot 
filenames).

Slightly off topic to networking, but these resource files are also 
troublesome for removeable media and CD's.  Apple also chose to put some 
data which would be expected to be found in the ._ files in a single 
(per directory) .DS_Store file instead (such as finder comments and file 
attributes [e.g. invisible flag]).  The ._ files are losely spec'ed as 
AppleDouble version 2 files, but the .DS_Store files are more of a 
mystery.  An Apple engineer told me "Apple can not make information on  
the .DS_Store files public at this time" when I asked what they were for 
and how to read/write them. :'(


Phil