Information AboutOstype |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT OSTYPE | |
| apple inc. software | |
| mac os | |
| metadata | |
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OSType values were used to identify file data format types, as well as the applications that created them. The separation of File Types and Creators allowed the coexistence of documents of the same format belonging to different applications; it was easy to reassign the ownership of any of these documents to any supporting application, without changing its name or otherwise affecting its contents. OSTypes were also used to identify the types of data in other places besides files: for instance, on the picture. Four byte identifiers are useful because they can be made up of four human-readable characters with mnemonic qualities, while still fitting in the four byte memory space typically allocated for integers in 32-bit systems. From a memory management standpoint, they're more easy to handle than for example Character String s of variable length. Compared to arbitrary 32-bit integer values, they are unambiguous since the byte-order is clearly defined. Other uses for OSTypes were:
OTHER PLATFORMS Similar four character codes are used to identify data types in many other operating systems and applications. These codes are generally referred to as FourCC s rather than OSTypes. |
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