and it’s not something you want to have happen. I have experienced most of the joy with this phenomenon when moving my Quicken data file between machines. I make heavy use of the Unix ‘cp -Rv [source] [destination]’ command when shoving things back and forth. One of the left-overs from Mac OS Classic are forked files. Unlike most of the desktop computer world, Mac files have a data fork and a resource fork. The other systems like Unix and Windows only deal with a data fork. It’s kind of like dinner at my family’s; think of the resource fork as the entre? fork that nobody bothers to pick up because they’re already using the salad fork they started with, and hey, why dirty another fork?

When you use the normal cp Unix command, only the data fork gets moved. Don’t ask me where the resource fork goes; I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is this: when a package file drops its resource fork, you have happened upon a bad thing. Searches online, in my books, and multiple postings to my local Macintosh User Group have yielded no results.

On a tangential but separate note, my 15″ PowerBook was picked up today, apparently being handled with the same expeditious treatment it received last week. Of course, I would obviously prefer not to be having problems, but since I do have them, having them treated with such attention is adequate consolation - at least the first two times. If number three comes up, that may well change.