brianw@microsoft.UUCP (Brian Willoughby) (09/14/89)
And now for something completely different...
Everyone is complaining that they want Mac HFS and DOS 3.3 FSTs, and
Apple is basically saying "wait until we do it, but don't expect
documentation on how to do it yourself". The real teaser for me is
that I have an Ensoniq Performance Sampler with a SCSI interface, and
FSTs hold the promise of allowing the Apple II to access files on an
EPS SCSI drive even though it is formatted for the EPS file system.
Apple might think that they will provide all that is needed in the way
of FSTs, but I doubt that they will ever get around to providing such
obscure uses for FSTs. Sure, they might eventually do HFS, DOS and
perhaps even MS-DOS, but I feel like I'm being teased with the capability
in the OS for File System Translation, and not having the opportunity
to roll my own. So what if my EPS FST were OS version dependant! It
would be much easier to reboot the old GS/OS that supports my EPS FST
than to never have it at all. I may be mistaken, but haven't there
been other Apple software products which wouldn't operate with newer
OS's than what they were developed on? I think that it is a very poor
excuse for not providing documentation just because FSTs are not
likely to be as easy to port to a new OS as a device driver would be.
Small price to pay compared to added file system translation into EVERY
app on a individual basis to support file systems that don't have an
FST from Apple! Without the means for writing our own FSTs, its
basically back to the old method of including the code in to every single
program that might need to access data on a file system not available in
FST form from Apple Co.
Brian Willoughby
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