Oolite Bulletins

What is going on
every time i download an oxp nowadays it comes up as Macosx and wont work
This never used to happen,
Before, I would sometimes get an oxp in mac format but there was usually a PC version in there somewhere
Now I just get a load of files of zero bytes

Any ideas

JG

PS what is a mac

You should be getting a folder named “._MacOSX” or similar as well as an OXP. Ignore the contents of the strangely-named folder.

j f gearing wrote:

PS what is a mac

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh

And I thought it was something to keep you dry in the rain....

TGHC wrote:

And I thought it was something to keep you dry in the rain....

No, unlike other computers, a mac is not a $900 peace of crap. I thought a pc was something to flush down the toilet .


Don't Panic: FSOneblin

P.S. This was a joke.

FSOneblin wrote:

TGHC wrote:

And I thought it was something to keep you dry in the rain....

No, unlike other computers, a mac is not a $900 peace of crap. I thought a pc was something to flush down the toilet .


Don't Panic: FSOneblin

P.S. This was a joke.

i dont give a crap

still having trouble but i expect it's me
On another subject, sometimes when i sign up to a haulage contract, new ones pop up, usually 100 times better than the one i've taken
I've been signing up for the good ones as well then dumping the first one
Should I be able to scroll the list in some way

cheers

JG

I said so in another thread, but I've had problems opening some OXP zip packages on Win system - the mac files inside cause an error in the midst of the extraction process.

Wolfwood wrote:

I said so in another thread, but I've had problems opening some OXP zip packages on Win system - the mac files inside cause an error in the midst of the extraction process.

I find this if I open the zip file as if it was a folder and try to copy the files by dragging the oxp folder over. If extract all the files using the extract option instead the mac files dont cause a problem

Difference between mac and dos/window file format stays a problem for sharing files between the two platforms. When the macintosh came out in 1984 it used a complete new, structured file format: resources. I always loved that format. But when you didn't want to use that structure, you could also use a unstructured file and maintain a structure yourself. This led to the situation that a mac file internally contains of two separate files (data- and resource fork). Often only one is used and the other stays empty.

For window compatibility only the unstructured datafork can be used. Zippers at the end of the 80ties often had the option to completely remove the mac-resource fork. That way it was by definition complete compatible but you lost your icons and filetypes in the process when extracted again on a mac.

Most mac zippers often have three options 1)always macbinary, 2)never mac binary 3)smart binary.
1) completely preserves the mac structure but is only recognised by a few window zippers.
2) should be completely compatible, but a lot of modern zippers still add the resource fork as separate files that the mac recognises and a window used can ditch.
3) Is the most dangerous one. It only uses macbinary when necessary.

When I zip files that should be also windows readable, I always choose 2. I used to use the zipper from the stuffIt package. Some months ago someone had problems with it and I changed to the mac's own zipper. I understood he had less problems with it. But that zipper has no preferences to select the type of compression. I now went back to my original zipper and also unchecked the option to include desktop files. I think this should be the most compatible option.

I just uploaded a new version 1.2 of Behemoth_Spacewar.oxp with this settings at: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Behemoth_Spacewar

It is very short and I also left version 1.1 online that was compressed with mac's internal zipper. Please report back if one of the two has advantages over the other.

The built-in compressor in OS X never uses MacBinary. What it does use is AppleDouble: resources and metadata are stored in separate files and folders. These are never needed for OXPs and can be safely ignored. As David says, extracting the archive instead of using Windows’s pseudo-folder interface should solve the problem.