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From: jln@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Gripes about System 7.0
Message-ID: <2939@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 17:06:51 GMT
References: <2936@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Organization: Northwestern University
Lines: 20

In article <1991Jan24.224108.19413@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> 
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) writes:
> Apple has a lot of problems in their task; ... and a filesystem
> that doesn't drive you batty) ...

Apple has cleaned up the file system quite a bit in 7.0.  There are new 
high-level File Manger routines which use "FSSpec" records to identify 
files.  An FSSPec record identifies a file by it's volume reference 
number, directory id, and file name.  I've been working with these calls 
lately, and they really are a major improvement.

The big problem is that the new calls only work under System 7.0, and they 
only work with HFS volumes.  One of the things I've been working on is a 
"glue" module that will make them work on all systems, even old 64K ROM 
systems, and with MFS volumes.

John Norstad
Academic Computing and Network Services
Northwestern University
jln@casbah.acns.nwu.edu