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: Angela Brett <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 00:53:15 +1200
My first reaction is (mainly) a thumbs-up. I don't like filename
extensions to be a necessity, it seems rather archaic for an OS to
need to use a file's name to figure out what kind of file it is.
However, I understand that we can't really avoid file extensions now
as they're all over the internet, and even if other OSes get rid of
their extensions, they'd be saving the metadata in a different way so
there would still be problems sending files over the internet. If we
must have file extensions, I think what was described is about the
best behaviour that 10.1 could have for them... in fact I think that
to the user it will seem just like it was in OS 9. The way the system
knows what sort of file it is is hidden unless you explicitly put an
extension on the name.
Then I read a few other posts, and I hope that there is something to
stop the creation of two files with the same name and different
hidden extensions. It's a complicated issue though. If the hidden
extensions are to be thought of in the same way as the OS 9 file
types (which is how I like to think of them, and how it seems they
will act, for the most part) then it would be impossible to have two
files in the same directory with different extensions. But that would
have to apply to files with visible extensions too, so that nothing
weird would happen if the user changes the preferences to always or
never (or is that not an option? I can't remember) show the file
extensions. That's not feasible because we don't want to have Blah.m
and Blah.h in different directories. I guess the best way would be,
as someone suggested, to have the extensions automatically unhidden
when there are two files with the same name in a directory, although
that contradicts the 'what you type is what you get' idea and could
confuse new users.
At 3:46 PM -0700 7/9/01, Ali Ozer wrote:
TextEdit's "deal with any extension" situation is really a special case,
and yes, such apps do have a few extra cases to deal with. For instance
TextEdit by default appends "txt" extension to new plain text documents,
unless you turn this off in TextEdit's preferences, or specify some
other extension while saving (in which case it puts up a panel to
confirm what extension you really want).
I never liked having .txt on TextEdit files, and turned that option
off... only to find that the Finder doesn't know which app to open
the files I created in TextEdit with. I don't use TextEdit much now.
I know this is a off-topic, but why can't I drag and drop text in
TextEdit? I really like being able to do that.
Okay, another tangent which I thought of because of SimpleText
files... I'd really like to have the option of making OS X always ask
before opening Classic. It's really annoying to double click on a
file and then discover that it's going to open in a Classic
application, so I have to wait for Classic to start up - I prefer to
have Classic running as little as possible as it uses up a lot of
resources. That's especially annoying if the file could have been
opened in OS X. I know having it ask before opening Classic makes the
OS 9 integration less seamless, but that's why it would only be an
option.
--
Angela Brett email@hidden
http://acronyms.co.nz/
"Great minds think different."