Q8. What is a HQX file?

A. HQX is a form of file encoding, NOT a Mac executable (exe).

Mac files come with two "forks" one holds the data, the other the resources for the file (it's icon, type, creator etc).

hqx is used to store the resources and the data forks of mac files in one file as other filesystems (dos, unix) don't support two forks for a file, so the resource fork gets deleted. .

This can result in file corruption, for example, applications are no longer recognised as applications by macintoshes as they have no resource fork with the information that they are an application.

The PC equivalent is having the suffix (.exe for example) deleted. You then have no way of telling what the file is.

So, a file can be hqx encoded, sent via PCs or Unix machines to another Mac, unencoded and used without any problems as the resource fork with the information about the file has been retained.

[SJT]