Message written at 27 May 1999 09:47:20 +0100

I have been attempting to find out some simple information about the
Mac, which has illuded me.  Then I thought of all you musical types
who use Macintosh computers, one of whom ought to know the answer.  
Yes this is off topic, as i need to know this for non-Csound reasons.

What is the Creator signature for PDF files?  I had thought that
Adobe's web site might answer that, but no it does not.  I could not
find a acroread mac-binary which was transferrable to my Mac, so I
need help.

A related question is what about PostScript files?  Do they have a
creator signature?  Is there a Mac ps viewer anyway?  

Please e-mail me with any help.  

jpff wrote:
>What is the Creator signature for PDF files?

Type: "PDF " (with trailing space).
Creator: CARO

Apple don't make the list of codes available, but an Ivan Szekely
has a downloadable database:
http://www.angelfire.com/il/szekely/
There's both a payware version and an older one which
works as  free demo.

>A related question is what about PostScript files?

Postscript files apparently have (type TEXT and) various
creators depending on what program generated it; ADBE if
PSTool was used, vgrc if it was PictroWriter, vgrd from
LaserWriter, etc.

>Is there a Mac ps viewer anyway?

The GNU Ghostscript  viewer is available for several platforms,
including macs. Links at:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html


Modulus my misunderstandings, since I'm just now trying to
learn about Mac myself.

cheers,

	re

> What is the Creator signature for PDF files?  I had thought that

when i used to have a job one of thie things i did was write an Acrobat
plug-in and i seem te remember since PDF is cross-platforrm you really
should open the file and read the firest few bytes to see if it starts
with whatever its supposed to start with ('PDF '??) 

i would guess the finder is smart enough to do this and launch acrobat
even with a file without the proper creator/filetype sig.

-matt