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Resource forks are not the only way to tell the file type!
Authored by: hopthrisC on Nov 26, '03 04:18:48PM
I don't want to start a huge discussion here! I myself tend to ignore the whole resource fork business, hoping that one day the issue will go away one way or the other, but...

You can tell the file type (very often) from the contents of a file. In fact there is a Unix command to do this: file(1). Try it on a .psd! To verify that it does not need the suffix or the resource fork, cp the file on the command line and run file again:

aschenputtel:~ hop$ file test.xxx
test.xxx: Adobe Photoshop Image

Let's take the EPS file format ;) Every PostScript file has to start with "%!PS". Easy to tell the type of content from this.

As for the Photoshop vs. Illustrator example you brought up: That's a valid point in some respects, but you may also see it from another standpoint: I usually open files with the application that is best fit to the task I intend to perform, which is not necessarily the same as the one used to create the file.

Once the file is saved as .eps in Photoshop, you can't vectorize it anyway, and Photoshop won't let you edit vector data, no matter how often it was created in Illustrator. [ignoring the fact that paths are vector data, just to get my point across ;) ]

The only reason to save a picture as EPS from Photoshop probably is, that you want to import it in a vector based application that doesn't import other formats (LaTeX comes to mind), so will you double click it ever again to open it with Photoshop?

The fonts... what should I say? Have you noticed that Apple is moving away from PS fonts and to TrueType fonts?

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