I am not sure if this is the right mailing list to send the following question. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Can someone throw light on the format of Desktop DataBase on Apple Macintosh machines? Pointers to where I can get this information are also welcome.
Thanks, - K Rama Krishna (krk@wipinfo.soft.net)
Can someone throw light on the format of Desktop DataBase on Apple Macintosh machines? Pointers to where I can get this information are also welcome.
I'm not aware of any official documentation, but my understanding is that the file is structured as a B*-tree similar to the catalog and extents files used in HFS volumes. Using similar techniques to read the file, you could probably decipher the key and possibly even the data format yourself.
Documentation for Apple's B*-tree format, at least as used by HFS, can be found here:
http://devworld.apple.com/dev/techsupport/insidemac/Files/Files-104.html#HEA...
The implementation of the B*-tree and node routines in the hfsutils package may be general enough to be adapted to the task of reading and/or manipulating the Desktop file (or any other B*-tree), with a little work.
I seem to remember, though, that Apple changed the format of the Desktop file from System 6 to System 7, such that the data now spans two separate files. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything else about it.
12/11/96 at approximately 9:56 PM -0800, you wrote:
Can someone throw light on the format of Desktop DataBase on Apple Macintosh machines? Pointers to where I can get this information are also welcome.
I'm not aware of any official documentation, but my understanding is that the file is structured as a B*-tree similar to the catalog and extents files used in HFS volumes. Using similar techniques to read the file, you could probably decipher the key and possibly even the data format yourself.
Chapter 9 of Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox seems to have some documentation, it's at http://devworld.apple.com/dev/techsupport/insidemac/MoreToolbox /MoreToolbox-483.html.
I seem to remember, though, that Apple changed the format of the Desktop file from System 6 to System 7, such that the data now spans two separate files. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything else about it.
System 6 used a resource-fork based desktop database(except for AppleShare servers, which even under system 6 used the system 7-like desktop database), the resource fork can only be a maximum of 16MB, and IIRC cannot be "shared", since system 7 offers "personal file-sharing", it was necessary to use the newer desktop database format. HTH.
-- Joel Klecker mailto:jk@esperance.com http://www.esperance.com/ Maintainer of the comp.sys.mac.comm FAQ "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli
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Joel Klecker -
K. Rama Krishna -
Rob Leslie