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: Andreas Monitzer <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 14:16:45 +0200
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at 09:52 , Ondra Cada wrote:
Well, yes and no. In majority of cases, definitely yes. Though, there are
not that spare cases when the type (whatever way expressed) _adds_ an
important information.
There is an application which uses a simple dictionaries, which are stored
as plain ASCII files. No content analysis can distinguish it from a normal
plaintext.
Now, of course it is important that the fact that _is_ a text should be
known, and those files can be easily and without problems opened in any
text
editor (TextEdit, BBEdit, vi, emacs, you name it...).
OTOH, the information that those are _primarily_ files of
SomeDictionaryApp
is quite important as well, and (as opposite to the default app binding)
it
is independent of user.
Maybe you didn't notice it, but you just advertised the concept of
creators :-)
file told me that my xml files are ASCII text, so there is definitely a
need for more than content-based type information.
Try "file ~/Library/Preferences/*". One Carbon app's preferences are even
detected as "8086 relocatable (Microsoft)".
Content analysis, of course, can be used as _part_ of this scheme, but
cannot replace it completely (without serious shortcomings).
What you (Ondra & Kenneth) basically described is: Do it like it's done in
Mac OS X, but replace file extensions with content-based mapping. I
actually agree with you :-)
I think I've read that Mac OS X already does content-based mapping as a
last resort (see that USENIX article by Wilfredo Sanchez).
andy
--
Discussion forthcoming.