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0 pointsmrkstu6y ago0 comments

He's mis-stating it slightly. You couldn't fiddle with a file's creator code, but there wasn't much reason to.

The type codes were editable, in the sense you could choose the default app you wanted to open files of that type, which is really what you'd want to modify most of the time.

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yrro6y ago

I don't remember this being the case. I don't think it was possible to change either a file's type or creator code without a tool such as ResEdit that wasn't included in the OS.

BTW, I think you're referring to the 'creator' code, not the 'type' code. The 'creator' code determined which application would open a file when it was opened. And it was per-file; I don't remember any mention of a system-wide 'default application' or anything like that.

This was actually rather nice in practice. It meant a JPEG image created by e.g., GraphicsConverter would be opened by GraphicsConverter when double-clicked; whereas one saved by a web browser would be opened in the web browser. But either could be dragged into either application in order to open the web-browser-saved image with GraphicsConverter.

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