[X Newbies] jpegs, etc.

[Florin Alexander Neumann]

On Tuesday, May 20, 2003, at 13:47 Canada/Eastern, Vincent Cayenne 
wrote:

> The third option that was used by Apple-preference pre-OS X was to
> store the metadata in a resource fork separate from the data fork of
> the file.
>
<snip>
> No, the information remained in the individual files.

I'm afraid you're wrong. This data was not held in the resource fork. 
It's fairly easy to check: use ResEdit to open a document such as a 
plain-text file (without state or other extraneous info) or a Word 
document. ResEdit will tell you it has no resource fork -- yet it still 
has type and creator codes. (Btw, anything stored in the resource fork 
is not metadata, since the resource fork is part of the file, i.e., of 
the data.)

> The type and creator wasn't particularly hidden and could be seen by
> the simple expedient of using the "Get Info" in the Finder.

The Finder didn't (and still doesn't) offer access to the type and 
creator codes, nor to ways of changing them. Again, it's fairly easy to 
check -- just do a Get Info (without, that is, having a utility such as 
Super Get Info installed). Under "kind", do you see a four character 
code? And can you change it?

f