[R] Mac OS 9 and file type/creator

[Luke Whitaker]

Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Jan de Leeuw wrote:

> > Although many people deplore this, OS X writes flat files as well and
> > derives type/creator information from the name of the file. So foo.pdf
> > is known to be a pdf file and the finder knows that pdf files must be
> > opened with AcroRead or Preview or whatever you set in your
> > preferences. This is the classical MIME-type scheme, less flexible,
> > more simple.
> 
> I don't see how it can be that simple -- some of my PDF files think they
> belong to Acrobat, and some think they belong to Preview.

A common misconception is that Mac OS X no longer uses type/creator codes.
It is true that Apple appears to want to phase them out, but they are still
there and still work, even with Cocoa applications.

My feeling is that this excellent technology should be preserved and if
enough developers keep using it, maybe Apple will have a change of heart.

So how about some brave person implementing it in the OS X version of R :-)

Luke Whitaker


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