owner-csound-outgoing wrote
>From owner-csound-outgoing Tue Aug 26 20:26:26 1997
From: owner-csound-outgoing
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 97 20:26:26 GMT
Message-Id: <21512.9708262026@maths.exeter.ac.uk>
To: owner-csound-outgoing
Subject: BOUNCE Csound: Non-member submission from [Tobias Kunze ]

>From tkunze@ulysses.stanford.edu Tue Aug 26 21:26:22 1997 remote from 
Received: from hermes.ex.ac.uk by maths.exeter.ac.uk; Tue, 26 Aug 97 21:26:22 +0100
Received: from ulysses.Stanford.EDU [36.49.0.124] by hermes via ESMTP (VAA17913); Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:26:20 +0100
Received: from localhost (tkunze@localhost) by ulysses.stanford.edu (950413.SGI.8.6.12/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id NAA19340; Tue, 26 Aug 1997 13:28:21 -0700
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 13:28:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tobias Kunze 
To: James Garfield 
Cc: John Francis Beahan , csound 
Subject: Re: MIDI files to PC
In-Reply-To: <3402D458.90005D48@badrat.com>
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


Pete and James are right but things are a little confusing, so
please excuse my attempt to clarify:

  - Mac files come in 2 files ("forks"), a data (raw, private)
    and resource (structured, public) fork, which causes problems
    when they are transferred to a different platform

  - to remedy that, Apple came up with numerous ways of encoding
    both forks into one file (with only a data fork) that may be 
    transferred easily.  The most well-known are the "BinHex"
    format (7-bit ASCII data, similar to uuencode) and the
    "MacBinary II" format (8-bit binary). The latter is nothing
    more than a header followed by the unencoded resource fork,
    followed by the unencoded data fork.

  - Mac Transfer software normally deals with conversion issues
    automatically with the intent to keep the conversion
    transparent.

Now, being a cross-platform format, MIDI files do not have a 
resource fork, even on Macs.  Therefore, you have to find a way
to instruct your transfer software NOT to use any conversion
(sometimes called just "Binary").  Plus, as James pointed out,
make sure the file ends in ".midi" or ".mid" and doesn't contain
characters that may interfere with URL's, such as ' ', '%', '&', 
';', etc.


Hope that helps, 

-Tobias



-- 
James Andrews, maths CDO, ext.3977