Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Sys Disk 5.0 Files
Message-ID: <10576@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Jul 89 00:01:41 GMT
References: <8907190556.AA29512@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <8907190556.AA29512@crash.cts.com> pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-generic!mhill@nosc.mil writes:
>Why is everybody bitching about ProDOS 8 not supporting forked files? WHY does
>ProDOS 8 NEED to support them?

Because, for example, Apple's BACKUP 1.1.1 utility is reported to be
incapable of backing up disks that contain forked files, thus leaving
hard-disk users with no even semi-reasonable way to back up their disks.

>Without a resource manager for ProDOS 8, and there is no need for that
>either, ProDOS should merely return an error when asked to work with a
>forked file.

It would be much better for it to return the data fork, although that
still would not help with the disk backup problem.