MacIVORY

["David A. Moon" <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM>]

    Date: Wed, 18 Oct 89 22:01:54 PDT
    From: carasso%nunki.usc.edu@usc.edu (Roger David Carasso)

    When I copy MacPaint files to the LMFS side of MacIvory, the
    file is a different size as the one on the Mac side.  When I copy
    it back to the Mac side (as a double test) it still is a different
    size as the original.  How is this explained?  Is there a bug
    in copying files???  I DID specify a binary file, though I tried many
    different ways with the same result.    

Some Macintosh files have a strange format (two forks) which doesn't
correspond to anything in other file systems such as LMFS or Unix.  If
you copied in binary mode, you probably got only the data fork, not
the resource fork.  For more information, you should read Apple
documentation, such as Inside Macintosh.

There is a :Mode Macintosh option to the Copy File command which
accesses both forks on the Macintosh, and on other file systems stores
all the information in an ad hoc binary format from which the two forks
can be reconstructed when writing back to a Macintosh.  However, I
believe this option only exists in Genera 8.0, which has not been
released yet.  If the option isn't there, you can call the
mtb::copy-mac-image function, which always copies two forks, or
the mtb::copy-mac-file function, which tries to guess which is the
right copying mode.  I believe these functions exist and work in 7.4.