Taking stacks from Windows to Mac: one solution

[Klaus Major]

Hi Kristen,

> I am running mc 2.3 on Mac OS 9 and on a PC laptop. I have no problem
> opening stacks on the PC that were saved on the Mac, but when I try to 
> open
> stacks saved on the Mac that were saved on the PC, mc does not 
> recognize
> them. I really need to be able to work both ways cross-platform. Is 
> this not
> possible?
>
> Thanks for all the help!
>
> Kristen Billings

the problem (not really ;-) is in the different kind of files
on mac and win.

The windows OS recognises file-types by their extension.
*.mc

The mac OS looks for some (invisible) resource-fork inside the file
to determine what to do with that file...

If this fork is missing, and it will be missing if transferred from 
windows,
where the OS cannot handle it so it just ignores it..., Mac-apps 
(including MC)
will not display these files in the open-dialog.

I solved this little inconvenience by adding a button to one of my
custom palettes with the following script.

It will try (sic! ;-) to open any file and beep, if it is not a valid
MC-file.

Here we go:

on mouseUp
   answer file "What stack may i open for you, dear Kristen ?"
   if it is not empty then
     try
       toplevel it
     catch errornum
       beep
     end try
   end if
end mouseUp

Hope this helps...


Regards

Klaus Major
klausimausi at mac.com