Submission details
Finder: no resource forks on network volumes
If i connect to a samba file share, windows and linux users always complain for the strange ._* files that are left behind.
This happens, because non-nac filesystems don't support resource forks.
You can turn of this "feature" with some geek tools or the command line.
An option to turn that off should be integrated into the normal finder preferences pane and should be disabled by default.
If the user copies a file to the network share and this will cause the loss of information stored in the resource fork, than a simple popup should inform the user, that he is going to lose some additional file information, eg a special icon.
Low
Low
Not fixed
Discussion (9 comments)
I didn't vote (and I won't), but wouldn't this be a real IT-aimed feature that Apple, you know, is not trying to supply for because most users wouldn't understand these troubles. Their Keep it Simple Stupid principle really makes their OS viable inside the market - one of the reasons Linux isn't getting to the masses (perceived complexity). Anyway, could be done, but would require an unfamiliar icon a complicated error message and a preference in the Finder that people wouldn't understand.
Oh, just for detail: there are many more things that should get in the Finder preferences before this - the Finder is incredibly incomplete.
The checkbox mojo2012 suggests would help a lot of people and prevent a lot of frustration. Apple should also allow us to disable resource fork creation for any removable media, because it's a nightmare giving people USB drives full of these files. I've also seen some digital cameras that crash if they try to preview ._(resource) files, so they cannot be used until all the files are removed from the offending memory card.
Most USB drives come formatted for FAT32 these days, and the 'Keep It Simple Stupid' users would have no idea how to reformat them for Mac. Many people need to keep them in FAT32 format so they can share files with Windows users. Having a little checkbox saying something along the lines of 'Prevent resource file creation on removable or network volumes' is a lot easier than having to explain over the phone to a newbie user 'Open up Terminal.. type xxxxx' etc etc.
I think a lot of people on this website are voting for imaginary 'Lowest Common Denominator' users rather than voting for themselves. It's not helping anybody. Placing a comment stating WHY something may be a bad idea because newbie users won't like it is all good and well, but voting down a perfectly good idea just because their grandmother wouldn't have use for it doesn't really help anybody.
It would help my grandmother not to get confused when that option is there - you know her heart can't take it. Anyway, the lowest commen denominator is not the actual public, but there's still a huge crowd in between the lowest commen denominator and things people don't want to know about in IT, as long as it just works. As far as I know, these are just files that are left behind and nothing more. Usually a little script can get rid of that - be it Applescript, .NET or whatever you use. I can use automator, I'm sure you can put something together in the IT department? But I'm not here to rant.
My personal opinion is based on interface, how users would use it and how they would respond to a message aimed at a very small crowd: the IT-department. Offer me an elegant solution that won't confuse users and I'll promote. But I'm not demoting this one because it makes sense, I'd just like an interface that works good. Maybe they can make a prefernce pane called 'IT' and stuff all that jazzbelly down there? Now that's a solution, Mr. MicroWaveDave, and not a Finder prefernce people stumble upon with questions.
Okay, I overreacted here. i'm not voting, I'm just wondering if there's a more elegant solution for all these IT request than adding checkboxes nobody really cares about.
IT departments aren't affected by resource forks, they couldn't care less about them. They can be removed in seconds with a terminal command. It's the end users who get frustrated by them. How annoying is it for students working on group university assignments who copy Word and Excel files to USB drives then give them to Windows using friends only to have them ask 'What are all these ._ files?' and their reply is... 'I don't know!' This is a real-life, every day complaint abot Macs. Every week when I worked at AppleCentre people would complain about it and ask if there's a way to turn it off - No, sorry, there isn't is my reply. You can remove them temporarily, but they'll just come back again. Then they got angry at me and told me they wouldn't buy another Mac because their 'It just works' advertising campaign is a total lie, so it wasn't really fun for anybody. A simple checkbox would have solved EVERYTHING. Apple already recognised PART of the problem and provided a way to turn off .ds_store creation on network volumes, yet they don't extend it to other media, and resource file creation cannot be turned off by default.
The files shouldn't be there unless they are needed, yet OS X has a habit of creating a resource fork for some files even if the resource fork is completely empty. It's been a known bug since OS X Beta but something Apple has not fixed. There is NO reason for a Word document or PowerPoint presentation to have a resource fork (unless somebody deliberately added a custom icon) so why is one occasionally created when I edit a file? It's annoying for end users, and even more annoying for people they share files with. It also plays havoc with people using Windows who want to run batch image resizing applications on folders, because they have to remove all the ._ files first, which if you have dozens of folders and thousands of files is extremely difficult to do with Windows unless you're a power user.
A little checkbox allowing resource forks to be turned off on non-Mac (ie non HFS+) media won't confuse people who don't understand it, because those people will just ignore it along with all the other pre-existing System Preferences options they don't understand. Even if they do click it, it won't do any harm except to delete image previews and custom icons. I don't care where the option is, it could be inside a System preference pane (which is what mojo2012 already suggested).
@MicrowaveDave: you hit the bull's-eye. Everyday I hear: "hey what are these strange files on my pendrive ...". As most of people on my university have windows pcs, they begin to explain me, why macs are crap and windows is soooo good.
Oh how I hate these damn resource forks ...
The bane of our existence!!!
You really, really need some psychiatric treatment. That last sentence is what a nemesis would say when he is in jail for the rest of his life at the end of a movie (though he'll escape in the sequel). Anyway, you make a convincing point - but actually I've noticed this too. There's a copy of every file in there. Now honestly, Apple shouldn't delete resource forks entirely - they should fine another way to implement them.
@jasper: "Now honestly, Apple shouldn't delete resource forks entirely - they should fine another way to implement them."
Can you suggest another way they can implement them? At least mojo2012 tried to suggest a fix. So far your grand total for helpful comments has been zero. Apple already provide a way to completely disable .ds_store files on network volumes, so the functionality is already in the OS it just needs to be tweaked.
Another suggestion for a fix: How about a folder at the root of each volume, call it 'Mac_OS_Resources' or similar (just so it's slightly descriptive, rather than completely obscure) that stores the resource files and .ds_store files for every folder and file on the volume. Inside it, store a mirrored folder hierarchy of the rest of the volume. It could be read and written to by all Macs and ignored by Windows users. Resource files are currently stored in the same folder as the file itself, but they could theoretically be stored anywhere on the volume. Storing them in a separate folder at the root of each volume at least keeps them safely away from everybody else. If a file is deleted by a Windows user the orphaned resource fork still remains in the other folder, but that's no different from the current way things work, ie a user can delete a ._(resource) file but leave the file intact, or just delete the file and leave the orphaned ._(resource) file intact. IT Admins can still move resource forks between volumes with Windows or Linux, they just use a script to find the original file and search for ._(resource) equivalents in the root folder and copy both files at the same time.
Another real-world example of this resource fork nightmare happened on the weekend - my poor girlfriend spent two hours editing photos from our holiday on her Windows laptop, only to find out she had been editing the jpeg ._(resource) icon previews of the photos instead of the real photos. Her image editing application just opens all the photos it finds in each folder. She's no IT genius so how was she to know that ._ files are meant to be ignored? I forgot to delete the files from her flash drive before giving it to her. She called me early in the day asking why the photos looked so bad, I told her it was probably her screen, maybe they'd look better after being printed, but didn't realise she was looking at the low-resolution versions instead of the real thing. She wasted two hours and it's a pain trying to explain to her to delete ._ files in future. Last year I gave Mum some Excel spreadsheets to open at her office but she thought they were corrupted, turns out again she was trying to open the empty ._ files. Apple really should have thought things through better before settling upon this system. It worked OK in OS9 but that was when resource forks were mainly used for applications but rarely for data files. OS X creates so many of the files that it really does cause problems for lots of people.
mojo2012 wrote on November 2, 2008, 11:10am
Whoever voted -1, please five some feedback!