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From: blochowi@rt5.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: The FST story continues
Keywords: FSTs
Message-ID: <3258@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 9 Oct 89 04:35:49 GMT
References: <502@fawlty.towers.oz> <35363@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@puff.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: blochowi@rt5.cs.wisc.edu (Jason Blochowiak)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 46

In article <35363@apple.Apple.COM> dlyons@Apple.COM (David Lyons) writes:
>In article <502@fawlty.towers.oz> johnmac@fawlty.towers.oz (John MacLean) writes:
>>[...] so all you need is the directory structure and file manipulation.
>>I remember putting Mac HFS and MFS reads into The Graphic Exchange in
>>ONE WEEKEND before Applefest at the end of last year; [...]

>John, I agree with almost everything you said.  I just have to point out
>that *writing* to an HFS volume is more complicated than reading it (since
>you have to rearrange the B-tree (or is it B*-tree?) directory structure
>whenever you add, delete, or rename a file).  Bugs in *reading* a disk
>are a nuisance, but any bugs in *writing* could destroy people's volumes.

	This is true, however don't you think that most people would be
happier if they had a read-only FST as opposed to having nothing at all? It
would seem that they could port the HFS read and the common code that read
uses first, throw that puppy out the door, and then work on putting in writes,
renames, formats, etc. The worst that would happen with a buggy read-only HFS
FST would be that someone would try to copy/import some file, and it would be
trash (well, this is assuming it didn't do a DWrite somewhere...).

	Anyways, for all of Apple's comments about their inability to comment
about Apple products that haven't been released yet, I found the following
"Note" in the new APW tools manual amusing: "DiskCheck will only verify a
ProDos volume. It will not work with an HSF [sic] volume." Now, if this
program were named DiskCheckIIGS (implying that it was a port of some MPW
tool, like some of the other stuff on the disks), then it would seem to be a 
bit less indicative of something interesting going on.

	Why doesn't Apple just have someone who officially "leaks" stuff - that
way, Apple would have deniability if something got killed, and it would almost
certainly make the rumors more accurate, even considering the "telephone"
effect (where things change as they move from mouth to ear...). Of course, they
wouldn't be able to leak everything, or else things would return to the way
they are today, but people would be complaining about things not existing
before the current round of stuff got released. I also seriously doubt that
for something like the HFS FST, it would damage any potential edge that Apple
would have...

> --Dave Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc.          |   DAL Systems


--
                 Jason Blochowiak - back at school (again).
             blochowi@garfield.cs.wisc.edu or jason@madnix.UUCP

            "What's up pruneface?" - Bugs Bunny in the year 2000