Editing FourCC (section)

==History==
In 1984, the earliest version of a Macintosh OS, [[System 1]], was released. It used the single-level [[Macintosh File System]] with metadata fields including [[Resource fork#Major resource types|file types]], [[creator code|creator (application) information]], and forks to store [[resource fork|additional resources]]. It was possible to change this information without changing the data itself, so that they could be interpreted differently. Identical codes were used throughout the system, as type tags for all kinds of data.<ref>{{citation | url = http://www.lacikam.co.il/tcdb/ | title = The Type/Creator Database}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.macdisk.com/macsigen.php | title = Signatures of Macintosh Files | access-date=December 1, 2015 | publisher = Logiciels & Services Duhem}}</ref>

In 1985, [[Electronic Arts]] introduced the [[Interchange File Format]] (IFF) meta-format (family of file formats), originally devised for use on the [[Amiga]]. These files consisted of a sequence of "chunks", which could contain arbitrary data, each chunk prefixed by a four-byte ID. The IFF specification explicitly mentions that the origins of the FourCC idea lie with Apple.<ref>{{Cite web|title="EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files|url=http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/2d/IFF.txt|last=Morrison|first=Jerry|publisher=[[Electronic Arts]]|date=January 14, 1985}}</ref>

This IFF was adopted by a number of developers including [[Apple Computer|Apple]] for [[Audio Interchange File Format|AIFF]] files and [[Microsoft]] for [[RIFF (File format)|RIFF]] files (which were used as the basis for the [[Audio Video Interleave|AVI]] and [[WAV]] file formats). Apple referred to many of these codes as ''OSTypes''. Microsoft and [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] developers refer to their four-byte identifiers as ''FourCCs'' or ''Four-Character Codes''. FourCC codes were also adopted by Microsoft to identify data formats used in [[DirectX]], specifically within DirectShow and DirectX Graphics.

=== In Apple systems ===
Since [[Mac OS X Panther]], OSType signatures are one of several sources that may be examined to determine a [[Uniform Type Identifier]] and are no longer used as the primary data type signature. Mac OS X (macOS) prefers the more colloquial convention of labelling file types using file name extensions. At the time of the change, the change was a source of great contention among older users, who believed that Apple was reverting to a more primitive way that misplaces [[Metadata (computing)|metadata]] in the filename.

Filesystem-associated type codes are not readily accessible for users to manipulate, although they can be viewed and changed with certain software, most notably the macOS command line tools ''GetFileInfo'' and ''SetFile'' which are installed as part of the developer tools into ''/Developer/Tools'', or the [[ResEdit]] utility available for older Macs.<ref>{{citation | url = https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/GetFileInfo.1.html | title = Darwin reference | contribution = GetFileInfo | type = man page | publisher = Apple}}</ref><ref>{{citation | url = https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/SetFile.1.html | title = Darwin reference | contribution = SetFile | type = man page | publisher = Apple}}</ref>