> Also, the opaque data starts with a magic number, so that different
> applications (users of the data) can tell if a node has their data or not.
> Also, the magic numbers are reserved both normal and byte-swapped, so that
> applications can tell if the opaque data is theirs from an opposite-endian
> machine. :-)

Why not just require the magic number to be in a particular byte
order?   This seems like the same amount of work for the application,
but doubles the magic number space.

Also, why not have a magic-number,length header, and define a standard
way for applications to add their own stuff to this "resource fork"?
It doesn't seem like it would be much work, what you're doing now is
the simple case of it, and it seems like it would be potentially quite
winning.

			       _MelloN_