Re: Mac OS X 10.1 File Name Extension Guidelines
Re: Mac OS X 10.1 File Name Extension Guidelines
- Subject: Re: Mac OS X 10.1 File Name Extension Guidelines
- From: Mark Munz <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 18:05:30 -0600
Talk about going from bad to worse. These "new" guidelines will only make
this issue more complicated, not less. The fact that it takes a 5 page
document to describe the behavior should give some indication of this.
If you want simple (from the user's stand point):
1. Applications *SHOULD ALWAYS* use Creator/Types, whether they developed
using Cocoa or Carbon. In other words - when the user creates a file with a
program, their Mac knows what program they created that file with and can
act appropriately.
2. Filenames are the users domain. They, and only they, determine if it has
a file extension and then only for readability. While a possible extension
may be used as an "alternative" method to determine it a file's type --
Creator/Type metadata remains the primary method for this.
3. The Finder (ie the File Manager) can provide the appropriate
transformations on creation (ie. from download, copy from another volume) or
on copy to non-HFS formatted volumes.
Sound familiar? It should - that's basically how Mac OS 9 works.
I find it ironic that Apple is pushing forward with filename extensions and
"flat" files when other OS companies (ie Microsoft) are offering disk
formats (NTFS) that add more (not less) metadata support, plus multi-forked
files. Of course there is also the issue with directory ID's/file ID's vs.
easily broken pathnames - but that will have to wait until Apple once again
pushes their stupid URL/pathname approach to identifying files.
Apple says they want to maintain compatibility with UFS, but 99.5% (or more)
of their users are running on HFS Plus volumes -- yet Apple isn't taking
advantage of the very cool features offered by that filing system. And they
don't seem to listen to their developers who are closer to their customer
than they are.
I wonder if Apple even knows who their customer is or if they just have some
wild notion of what they *WANT* their customer to be like and think that
somehow the customer can be pushed to "see the light" and change their ways.
Mark Munz
unmarked software