One of the fun things to do with 4D is to take it apart. Long-time Mac users know how to edit an application’s resources, and sometimes you can find rather interesting artifacts in that way.
As it happens, in 4D 2003 and earlier, resource PICT ID=9000 was a picture of a dog. It is used for a QuickTime preview or something. This precipitated the question, “Whose dog is it, anyway?” I remember asking Someone French this question at a 4D Summit long ago, and I was interested to learn that it is (supposedly) François Marchal’s dog. It was nice to know that it was actually someone’s dog, and not just a dog from a clip art collection. I’ve always wondered about the dog’s name. Is it Buddy? Is it Rex? Anyway, the picture is a nice little Easter Egg in 4D and it made me happy to know the story behind it.
One day I decided to check 4D 2004 to see if François Marchal’s dog was still there. It wasn’t! PICT ID=9000 was no longer a picture of a dog, but instead a picture of two horses. Alors! What has happened here? Oè est le chien? I miss him already! I hope he is doing OK.
So now the question is “Whose horses are they, anyway?”
My Golden Retriever Ness is now an old dog, but still alive and happy. Let me introduce the horses. The grey arabian mare is my beloved horse Hassira. The black one is a “Cheval de Mérens”, he is my wife’s horse. He is now 20 years old and still in pretty good shape and ready for a ride. Those pictures are not specially an easter egg, but are used as a preview in the Quicktime dialog, to show picture transformation when using various components.
- François Marchal