dlyons@Apple.COM (David A. Lyons) (11/29/89)
I've lost track of who said what in all this quoting, but certainly ProDOS 8 programs *can* support extended files on ProDOS disks if they want to go to the extra trouble. The file-oriented MLI commands don't support extended files, but you can get at them using READ_BLOCK and WRITE_BLOCK. It isn't generally recommended, and it isn't trivial, but the format of extended files on ProDOS disks is documented in ProDOS 8 Technical Note #25, dated April 1989 (the last section, "Storage Type 5", is the relevant one). As I understand it, Copy II Plus *already* does direct block access for most or all of its operations, so this would be less trouble than adding extended-file support to a program that does all of its stuff through the regular file-oriented MLI commands. [I don't want to make block-level access sound -good- here, though: one down-side is that there is -no- compatibility with AppleShare file servers if you do everything at the block level.] -- --David A. Lyons, Apple Computer, Inc. | DAL Systems Apple II Developer Technical Support | P.O. Box 875 America Online: Dave Lyons | Cupertino, CA 95015-0875 GEnie: D.LYONS2 or DAVE.LYONS CompuServe: 72177,3233 Internet/BITNET: dlyons@apple.com UUCP: ...!ames!apple!dlyons My opinions are my own, not Apple's.