Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
From: awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: De-macification of the Amiga (Re: The Amiga's Future)
Message-ID: <50771@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 18 Jun 91 15:33:54 GMT
References: <1991Jun16.214309.18102@news.iastate.edu> <1991Jun17.123525.1485@sugar.hackercorp.com> <50645@ut-emx.uucp> <1991Jun17.224713.10156@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Sender: news@ut-emx.uucp
Reply-To: awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 19

In article <1991Jun17.224713.10156@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <50645@ut-emx.uucp> awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes:
>> ResEdit is only needed if you want to add
>> resources to a program to allow it to accept files that it can translate but
>> did not create.
>
>I don't get it. Why would this not be the default?

In most cases it is the default, but there are lots of exceptions.  Word knows
about text files, but unless the file type of the document is TEXT, it won't
match the TEXT FREF resource in Word that tells the OS what Word can open.  Word
also knows about MacPaint files, but unless "Fred's Paint"'s document type 
has an analogue in Word's FREF resource list, Word can't open it.  If you have
ResEdit, you can simply add (for example) the FPNT document type to Word's
FREF list and you can drag and drop Fred's Paint docs to Word.

It sounds kludgey maybe, but the vast majority of users never have to worry 
about what docs a program will open or even what ResEdit is.  ResEdit is sort
of the doorway to the other side of the interface.