&gt;<i>Gosh, are you saying that the common use of ADS was a common mac pattern and people very familiar with the history of macs would understand this well?</i><p>It was quite common, yes, and even more extended in the past, but I&#x27;m saying something else: that noticing it and having issues with it wasn&#x27;t that common. It&#x27;s a leaky abstraction, but you don&#x27;t often meet that leak.<p>Case in point TFA&#x27;s issue. He has a zero-sized font file where all the data are in the resource leak. All fonts I&#x27;ve dealt with in OS X have been proper files, you can copy over to other FS normally.<p>&gt;<i>Do you really think that refutes the point that they&#x27;re confusing to everyone else?</i><p>No, as I wrote: &quot;It sure can be confusing (and I see how)&quot;.<p>But it&#x27;s not that often that it has a chance to be confusing (at least in my experience -- but I&#x27;ve also not seen much discussion in support forums, questions from friends&#x2F;colleagues with Macs etc about such as issues, whereas I&#x27;ve seen for many other issues).<p>&gt;<i>While many OSs have implementations of ADS, almost no one uses them.</i><p>Wouldn&#x27;t that make them even MORE confusing in those OSs, the times they&#x27;re finally used? As opposed to an OS that regularly uses them?