XTND
Encyclopedia
XTND was a document import/export system developed by Claris
for their products on the Apple Macintosh. Products supporting XTND placed an additional popup menu in the open and save dialogs, allowing users to read and write documents from any supported format. The name is a four-letter contraction of extend, the Mac using four-letter identifiers in its system resource
files.
XTND was first introduced on some of Claris' "II" releases -- MacWrite II
, FileMaker II
and MacDraw II
. The system proved popular, and became a major selling point for Claris products, which were otherwise considered somewhat "low end". The system was soon used by a number of other products as well, and became fairly common during the early 1990s.
Around 1990/91 Claris gave the system to Apple, who eventually re-branded it as a basic part of the Mac OS known as the Translation Manager. They also added Macintosh Easy Open which offered to open unknown documents using software installed on the machine and converting it using XTND. A developer's guide, XTND Programmer's Guide, was published in 1991 along with the XTND Developer's Kit 1.3, which was placed on their ftp site. XTND broke on the PowerMacs, but an extension-to-the-extension released in 1993 fixed that for a time. By the 1995/96 time frame it appears Apple had already abandoned the entire system.
XTND consisted of a simple runtime engine that listed, loaded and managed a series of "translators". The translators were stored in resource files placed in the Mac's System folder, allowing them to be found and used by any program supporting the XTND system. Almost all of the actual logic was located in the translators, the runtime simply handed off filenames and parameters to code stored inside.
The only technical problem with XTND was that the conversion process was "opaque". The system ran code in the translators which had no way to provide feedback to the user or ask questions. This made it was difficult to tell if long conversions were actually working or had locked up, a common occurrence as the code aged. Additionally the converters themselves varied widely in quality, in particular the Microsoft Word
extension never really worked very well.
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
for their products on the Apple Macintosh. Products supporting XTND placed an additional popup menu in the open and save dialogs, allowing users to read and write documents from any supported format. The name is a four-letter contraction of extend, the Mac using four-letter identifiers in its system resource
Resource fork
The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and...
files.
XTND was first introduced on some of Claris' "II" releases -- MacWrite II
MacWrite
MacWrite was a word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG operation, with multiple fonts and styles...
, FileMaker II
FileMaker
FileMaker Pro is a cross-platform relational database application from FileMaker Inc., formerly Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. It integrates a database engine with a GUI-based interface, allowing users to modify the database by dragging new elements into layouts, screens, or forms...
and MacDraw II
MacDraw
MacDraw was a vector based drawing application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacDraw was one of the first WYSIWYG drawing programs that could be used in collaboration with MacWrite. MacDraw was useful for drawing technical diagrams and floorplans...
. The system proved popular, and became a major selling point for Claris products, which were otherwise considered somewhat "low end". The system was soon used by a number of other products as well, and became fairly common during the early 1990s.
Around 1990/91 Claris gave the system to Apple, who eventually re-branded it as a basic part of the Mac OS known as the Translation Manager. They also added Macintosh Easy Open which offered to open unknown documents using software installed on the machine and converting it using XTND. A developer's guide, XTND Programmer's Guide, was published in 1991 along with the XTND Developer's Kit 1.3, which was placed on their ftp site. XTND broke on the PowerMacs, but an extension-to-the-extension released in 1993 fixed that for a time. By the 1995/96 time frame it appears Apple had already abandoned the entire system.
XTND consisted of a simple runtime engine that listed, loaded and managed a series of "translators". The translators were stored in resource files placed in the Mac's System folder, allowing them to be found and used by any program supporting the XTND system. Almost all of the actual logic was located in the translators, the runtime simply handed off filenames and parameters to code stored inside.
The only technical problem with XTND was that the conversion process was "opaque". The system ran code in the translators which had no way to provide feedback to the user or ask questions. This made it was difficult to tell if long conversions were actually working or had locked up, a common occurrence as the code aged. Additionally the converters themselves varied widely in quality, in particular the Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
extension never really worked very well.