Specifications

The primary output of a processor (i.e. the incoming job with any changes applied by the
processor) retains the same unique name prefix as the incoming job.
When a job looses its unique name prefix (for example because the “strip unique name” property
is set for an archive or a final folder), it also looses the association with its internal job ticket.
Handing over jobs between flows
Switch can pass along a job from one flow to another without loosing the job's association with
its internal job ticket (assuming both flows are being executed by the same instance of Switch;
hand-over between different instances of Switch does not preserve the internal job ticket
information at this time).
This feature enables splitting up a complex flow in smaller segments without loosing any
information.
To hand over jobs from flow A to flow B:
• In flow A, create a user-managed folder with no outgoing connections and make sure its
“strip unique name” property is set to No.
• In flow B, create a user-managed folder with the same backing folder (the folder in flow B
may or may not have incoming connections).
13.4 Mac file types
Background information
Microsoft Windows uses the filename extension (which is required) to determine a file’s type.
Apple's Mac OS X uses the filename extension (if present) and in addition uses the file type and
creator codes (if present) stored in the catalog entry for the file. This allows Mac OS X to be
compatible with the external world (i.e. Windows and Unix, which use filename extensions) and
with Mac Classic (which exclusively used Mac file types).
Successfully exchanging files in a mixed platform environment requires performing a mapping
between Mac file types and filename extensions. And since the catalog entries for file type and
creator codes are supported only by Mac-specific file systems (such as HFS), they must be emulated
on foreign file systems (such as FAT).
Mac OS X (and Mac Classic) also allows files to have a resource fork (a second stream of information
in addition to the main data). In its most extreme form, a file may store all of its information in
the resource fork and have zero data bytes (as is the case for certain types of Classic font files).
Modern applications tend to rely less on the contents of the resource fork than Classic applications,
but in general the resource fork cannot be ignored.
Again resource forks are directly supported only by Mac-specific file systems, and thus must be
emulated on foreign file systems.
Emulation with dot-underscore file (AppleDouble)
When a Mac OS X user copies a file from a Mac-specific volume to a foreign volume, the system
splits out any information that is not located in the data fork of the file and writes it to a hidden
file on the destination volume. The name of this file is the same as the original file except that
it has a dot-underscore prefix. For example, if the user copies an file named MyMug.jpg to a
foreign volume, there will be a file named ._MyMug.jpg in addition to the MyMug.jpg file in the
same location.
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