The resulting file is suitable for transmission over FTP, the World Wide Web, and electronic mail.
The documents can also be stored on computers that run operating systems with no HFS support, such as Unix or Windows.
This problem led to a number of solutions that combined the two forks together into a single file, and then automatically pulling them back apart when they reached another Mac.
Most dedicated FTP programs for the Mac, such as Fetch and Transmit, transparently decode MacBinary files they download.
In the meantime, Apple itself had released the AppleSingle and AppleDouble formats, which serve the same purpose as MacBinary, but correct some problems with it.