E-Maculation

Old-School-BBSer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2024 5:25 pm Has anyone ever found a solution to this problem? So many years have gone by, and yet it still persists. There are certain files I want to add to my BBS in SheepShaver, but I can't, because of this AppleDoubles issue. I was hopeful that the DropStuff/Stuffit Expander solution would work, but as has already been noted, it doesn't. Stuffing and then expanding still produces the "__MACOSX" folder. Regarding the so-called "ZIP-JOINER!" app, the OP is right. I have never been able to find it anywhere either.

Old-School-BBSer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 12:49 am Adespoton, thank you very much for this! So there has actually been a little known solution to this problem for a number of years now.

I just downloaded both files, and I am trying to figure out how to use Decode Applefile 1.1. I read the developers ReadMe file, but I am stilll a little confused, regarding exactly how to use his app in Mac OS 9.2.2.

To test it out, I just unzipped a copy of Basilisk in my Mac OS 9 environment, using StuffIt Expander. This, of course produced a Basilisk folder -- which contains two apps called Basilisk with the .app file extension, as well as the troublesome __MACOSX folder.

So, when he says to "Select the encoded file (This is the "%" file)", is he talking about the zipped archive, or one of the unzipped Basilisk apps?

And when he says "Select the data file to be appended. (This is the "non-%" file.), is he talking about the __MACOSX folder? In other words, I have no idea what he means by the % symbol.

Can you help this old, slow-of-mind person? Thanks, as always.

emendelson wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 11:58 am Excellent find! And here is the full information page - it turns out that the app is scriptable:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150309103 ... eFile.html

And here's a page of other stuff that may be useful too:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150309101 ... stuff.html

Old-School-BBSer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:43 pm Ha! A lot of geeky old stuff on that page. I grabbed the various versions of Mail Drop to add to my small group of ancient email clients.

But what I would REALLY like to find -- probably an impossibility -- are some old web browsers which just not only still launch in Mac OS 9.2.2 or earlier, but which ALSO can still actually connect to websites. The ones I have now -- Classilla, Firefox, Netscape and Mozilla -- all fail to do this, because they no longer meet the minimum security requirements for modern websites, it seems. So, they are basically useless toys ..... unless I am just missing something. See. I'm humble about it.

It is tested on NeXTSTEP 3.3, Rhapsody 5.6, Mac OS X, Linux, NetBSD, AIX 4+ (4.1.5 and 6.1 specifically), Power MachTen 4.1.4 and A/UX 3.1.

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:07 pm And THAT is a great find, EMendelson! Since you're the local AppleScript wizard, any chance you could write up a droplet that recognizes different AppleDouble formats and can automagically combine them?

emendelson wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 4:04 pm

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:07 pm And THAT is a great find, EMendelson! Since you're the local AppleScript wizard, any chance you could write up a droplet that recognizes different AppleDouble formats and can automagically combine them?

Hmmm... that should be possible - Test for the filenames and act accordingly. I know nothing about AppleDouble formats - are all of them described on that linked information page?

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 4:41 pm I've lost track, to be honest. There's the A/UX style (file [data] + %file [resource]), the OS X way (file [data] + ._file [resource]), the OS X Zip way (file [data] + __MACOSX/._file [resource]), and I can't remember what BII/SS shared folders and HFSExplorer do.

emendelson wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 9:51 pm

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 4:41 pm I've lost track, to be honest. There's the A/UX style (file [data] + %file [resource]), the OS X way (file [data] + ._file [resource]), the OS X Zip way (file [data] + __MACOSX/._file [resource]), and I can't remember what BII/SS shared folders and HFSExplorer do.

Can anyone post a sample set of files to work with?

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:07 pm And THAT is a great find, EMendelson! Since you're the local AppleScript wizard, any chance you could write up a droplet that recognizes different AppleDouble formats and can automagically combine them?

ls -l NameOfOldFile/..namedfork/rsrc

emendelson wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 6:26 pm

adespoton wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:07 pm And THAT is a great find, EMendelson! Since you're the local AppleScript wizard, any chance you could write up a droplet that recognizes different AppleDouble formats and can automagically combine them?

EDIT: Revised because the AppleScript app now lets you drop a file on it.

Well, nothing like a challenge. Here is a ZIP archive that contains the DecodeAppleFile 1.1 app and an AppleScript app that uses it to recombine the two parts of an AppleDouble file. (Also a sample AppleDouble file to experiment with.)

https://mendelson.org/DecodeAppleDouble.zip

Move the contents of the archive to a SheepShaver setup.

Then either (1) run the AppleScript; if it asks, tell it where to find DecodeAppleFile 1.1, and then choose the two parts of the AppleDouble at the prompts

or (2) drop the data fork part of an AppleDouble file (the part that does NOT begin with "%_" or "._") on the applet; if all goes well (and if the encoded part is present in the same folder), the applet will create a decoded file in the same folder. If it can't find the encoded part, it will prompt you. The first time you run it, it may ask you where to find DecodeAppleFile 1.1.

The DecodeAppleFile 1.1 app seems to be fairly demanding about the format of the encoded file. If the formats aren't exactly right, SheepShaver will hang.

Don't even ask me about my adventures trying to create an AppleDouble file to experiment with. I finally remembered that macOS stores the resource fork of an old Mac file as an extended attribute, as you can see by running the command "ls -la@" - which shows the resource fork listed as an extended attribute, and not part of the size of the file itself. (The Finder's Get Info shows the size of the file and its extended attributes combined, so Get Info and the "ls" command show different results.") EDIT: You can also see the resource fork in macOS by entering this in the terminal (and you can use other shell commands to manipulate the fork):

Code: Select all

ls -l NameOfOldFile/..namedfork/rsrc

To create an AppleDouble, copy the original file to an HFS-formatted disk (for example on a USB stick), and run the built-in macOS command SplitForks on the file to save the resource fork as a separate file. However, if you want to experiment, you amy need to strip the extended attribute from the original file by running "xattr -rc" on that original file. This, finally, will produce a real AppleDouble pair of files, one named SomeFile and the other named ._SomeFile

For convenience and reliability, I renamed "._SomeFile" to "%_SomeFile" so that it would be visible, and follow the A/UX AppleDouble filename convention.

This script comes with no support. If the AppleScript doesn't work on your system, please feel free to edit it yourself. I don't think I'll ever have any real use for this app, and wrote the script only because the challenge sounded enjoyable. It was in fact more of a challenge than I expected, because the documentation of the DecodeAppleFile 1.1 app is minimal, and the sample AppleScript code provided there needed to be completely rewritten in order to create a working script that lets you choose the file you want to decode.