Compatibility problems
The complexity of programming with resource forks has led to compatibility problems with other filesystems in the past. In order to transmit a Macintosh file over a network or other medium, the data and resource forks must be serialized together. A number of file formats, such as
MacBinary and
BinHex, have been used to implement this. Command-line system tools SplitForks and FixupResourceForks allow manual flattening and merging of resource forks. In addition, a file server seeking to present filesystems to Macintosh clients must accommodate the resource fork as well as the data fork of files;
UNIX servers usually implement this with hidden directories.