[#]GlobalTalk chatter: what’s the AppleTalk equivalent of URLs?
On the Internet, we can use URLs like
ftp://user:password@server.example.com/path/toshare
to describe the location and type of a resource.
What’s the AppleTalk standard style for addressing, say, folder x, in folder y, in share z, on server a, in zone b, over protocol c?
user i and password j optional.
Old school style guides may need to be consulted.
Was there a standard? I have vague memories there was, google-fu failing.
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I might be settling on:
afp:/at/WOzFest HQ Server:WOzFest HQ/WOzFest HQ Files/
even though that’s later than the vintage of AIR - it will have to be human-read, or used on a Mac OS X client (it works in Mac OS X v10.3).
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@europlus yeh, it's been a LONG time since I used appletalk. I used to have an appletalk server running on Linux at one stage... but I can't remember. I do recall there was some sort of user@domain\path (pretty sure it's backslashes, just to be weird)
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@sortius Mac paths historically used : but that might not have been used for what I’m thinking of.
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@europlus yeh, it was all a bit different once you moved to network. I might be confusing it with NFS
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@europlus this might be what you're looking for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Filing_Protocol
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@sortius thanks, that’s really useful, I hadn’t noticed the actual URL format for AppleTalk servers when I looked at that recently, but that scheme was introduced much later than the 1990’s, so while I’ll possibly use
afp://at/⟨AppleTalk name⟩:⟨AppleTalk zone⟩/⟨path⟩/⟨to⟩/⟨file⟩
I’m sure there was a pre-URL addressing scheme I may prefer to use.
Googling continues, but at least I have a solution now if I don’t find prior scheme.
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@europlus yep, by the looks of it you're looking for AFP 2.0 or earlier. Maybe the Netatalk (Linux AppleTalk server) manual might help https://netatalk.io/?
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@sortius I had a glance earlier, decided to lazy-search by asking ;)
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@europlus AppleTalk really only specifies how to find a service via NBP: object:type@zone. AFP and PAP services define a specific URL format for AppleTalk-based shares which might be what you want. See Appendix A of the AFP client documentation: https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/macintosh/AFPClient.pdf
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@_the_cloud Thanks, that’s useful - I saw the NBP format as well, but it didn't feel descriptive enough for what I want, so the (extended) URL you show is likely to be what I’ll use (well, without username and password, just like what is on Wikipedia AppleTalk page, too).
I thought there was something that used something like the NBP base to expand further to paths, etc.
But it appears that as a large language model, I may be hallucinating.
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@europlus I had a look at the AFP spec in Inside AppleTalk 2nd Edition, and it's not a simple string; you need a dynamically obtained vol ID and a set of null-separated path components. As an experiment, I made an alias to a file on an AFP share in Finder and inspected the contents of its 'alis' resource. No URLs, but the server name and zone are in there, along with a colon-separated path on the server volume.
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@_the_cloud Hmm, I might do the same, unless you save me the bother by posting a screenshot 🤣
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@_the_cloud scrub that lazy request - I already had an alias to a share, so I looked at it and can see what you mean. I’d need a TMPL for “alis” resources to get a more human-friendly view.
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@europlus There's a lot of data in the resource, including file type and creator, and the server and zone strings look like they're maintained separately in fixed-size Str31 buffers. Not sure it's a useful example since it seems to be an internal Alias Manager data structure.
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@europlus You might also look through the documentation for the Columbia Appletalk Package, which was a generation earlier than netatalk. https://github.com/mabam/CAP/tree/master/doc
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@stevendbrewer Thanks - nothing at first glance.
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@europlus On the Mac, in that era, of course, there was nothing like a shell: stuff had to show up in the Chooser for you to be able to select it. I remember when you began to be able to use a URI to navigate to things and what a revelation it was.
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@stevendbrewer Yeah, but I thought there might be a style used in manuals and/or magazines for specifying the hierarchy.
Maybe I dreamed it.
Maybe I still can dream it happens...
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@europlus FWIW, HyperCard uses
Zone Name:Machine Name:Process Name
to specify AppleTalk targets for Remote Events/RPC calls (it doesn’t have any support file share support)
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