Skip to main content
6 events
when toggle format what by license comment
Feb 3, 2023 at 9:26 comment added IMSoP @hippietrail I mis-spoke; it was Acorn RiscOS that I was thinking of.
Feb 3, 2023 at 7:29 comment added hippietrail @IMSoP On the Amiga an "application" was just an executable file. The term "application" was not used though. Me and my friends called them "programs". I can't remember what the Amiga docs called them. AmigaOS did not have a native concept of resources either in the program file or external files. Some programs had only the binary executable file and some had a bunch of files and directories in custom formats. So I don't think "application as magic directory" is correct any way I interpret it.
Jan 18, 2023 at 1:25 comment added Raffzahn You may want to incorporate footnote#1 direct into the text, as PARC had them before, which is were Jobs (probably) saw the concept first.
Jan 17, 2023 at 21:07 comment added IMSoP After carefully explaining in the first paragraph that you're talking about the original MacOS, you immediately switch to talking about applications on the modern (Unix-based) macOS. Applications on the original MacOS were single files, with additional elements stored in their resource fork. I believe the Amiga Workbench used the "application as magic directory" technique, but the relationship of the whole thing to the "directory" vs "folder" distinction seems tenuous.
Jan 17, 2023 at 11:35 comment added Steve On "files", I would guess a "file" was primarily conceived as containing organised data - so the basic unit of a file system, the file, is something that practically always has some further internal structure.
Jan 17, 2023 at 9:36 history answered JeremyP CC BY-SA 4.0