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: Jonathan Hendry <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 22:55:45 -0500
On Saturday, September 8, 2001, at 05:32 , Peter Ammon wrote:
Pretty much everyone seems to agree that filename extensions are for
compatibility purposes only, and that native type/creator codes are a
much better solution to the same problem. Therefore, it seems reasonable
to me that filename extensions should be enforced only when compatibility
is important, such as sending files to other machines, instead of
throughout the entire filesystem.
This is not viable if Apple ever wants Mac OS X to live happily
on heterogenous corporate networks. (If OS X doesn't keep the
managers of those networks happy, OS X won't be on the networks.)
Having to send files through a conversion airlock on the way in
or out is an anachronistic throwback to the days of ZTerm and
BBSes, and has no place in an operating system that makes
'sending files' transparent: the /Network folder.
In the typical NeXTSTEP installation, users' home directories
were mounted via NFS. Other directories, such as shared applications
and documents, were also mounted via NFS. I would not be surprised
if Apple suggests this as a typical setup if they ever get back
into large corporations like banks. (It's quite nice to be able
to walk to another building a few blocks away and log into your
same account and environment as at your desk.)
In such cases, the files are on your computer in RAM only. There's
no way of knowing what OS the fileserver is running. It could be
a Mac running OS X with HFS+ disks. It could be a Linux box running
NFS. It could be a big high-performance Auspex server. As such,
there is no 'airlock' process where the OS can know that it's
transferring a file to another OS and needs to do the conversion.
That is, there may be no process of "Now I'm copying from the
other OS to Mac OS X. Now I'm working on my local copy. Now
I'm copying from OS X to the other OS and I do the translations."