[thelist] [thelist digest] Authoring CD to autorun in Mac - PC guy needs help.

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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To close the loop on this, the reason why a Mac can't work out that
a .html file should be opened in a browser is that Macs don't use the file
extension to globally associate files with apps.

The way Macs store files is in 2 parts (which are written separately to
disk) - a data fork (which contains the actual file contents - the text,
or binary data or whatever) and a resource fork which contains meta
data. Part of that meta data is some information about what kind of
file it is (eg a GIF image), and what application created it. This is very
nifty, as it lets you associate individual files with applications. So you
can have an HTML file which is associated with DreamWeaver, and
will always open in DW when you double click it, for when you're doing
visual work on it. Then when you want to hand-hack it, you can associate
it with BBEdit. Finally, when you just want to browse the thing, you can
associate it with a browser.

If you're burning a cd without that data, a Mac reading the file without
hints as to the app you want to use (eg "Open with...", dragging & dropping
onto an app) is going to have problems.

Additional stuff - if you want more evidence of Resource Forks, use a Mac
to drop a few files onto a PC formatted disks (Macs will read both, unlike
PCs), then view that disk in Windows. You'll see a few additional files,
one of which will be one called RESOURCE.FRK

Cheers
Martin





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Subject:  Re: [thelist] [thelist digest] Authoring CD to autorun in Mac -
      PC guy needs help.

The problem is that CDEverywhere doesn't actually seem to
write the type/creator information.

>Using a PC, I've created a CD with an html interface.
>
>I want the user to open start.htm in the root (or autostart if that option
>is enabled).
>
>I've followed the instructions in CDEverywhere for creating a hybrid CD,
and
>it works fine on my old Power mac 7100 but when I tested it today on a
>friend's bog-standard modern pretty Imac:
>2) It threw up a dialogue asking for the file's creator - Word or
Netscape.



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