RESOURCE.FRK Mac Suitcase, Font/DA Mover, system file priority over fmt/134

[David Emery]

Hello PRONOM community. I just ran DROID on a bunch of files created circa Mac System 6 and noticed they aren't given priority over fmt/134 MPEG 1/2 Audio Layer 3. All of these files were located in RESOURCE.FRK subfolders. Some common file names:

!SUITCAS.EII - Associated with Mac Suitcase II.

!FONTDAM.OVE - Associated with Mac Font/DA Mover.

!FONTMOV.ER - Associated with Mac Font Mover.

SYSTEM - Macintosh System File Version 6.0.

Cross-posted to the DROID group.

[Tyler Thorsted]

Hi David,

I work with a lot of early Macintosh systems and formats for preservation. The PRONOM registry will have difficulty with many of the formats you might find on HFS disks, resource forks especially.

I wouldn't expect DROID to identify any of those files you mentioned as they are MacOS system files and resource fork only. Most folks are not preserving System files as individual files. In order to identify them and give them a priority over fmt/134, a lot would have to change in DROID to be Mac HFS aware and see resource forks and data forks and make identification based on a lot of updated signatures. I don't suspect there is a lot of need to identify individual system files, but if there are other formats on the disk you do need to preserve and they have resource forks, I would recommend converting them to a MacBinary or AppleSingle file for preservation. If you need the whole disk, then preserve the disk as an image file.

You can see a presentation I did on the subject.

https://youtu.be/3iytNgWTNAA

Tyler Thorsted