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: "Neal A. Crocker" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 22:32:24 -0700
On Monday, September 10, 2001, at 03:10 AM, Neal A. Crocker wrote:
In the Mac OS user experience, the average user never has to change
the code, or even see it, so they never have to remember it.
I absolutely cannot confirm this.
Many of the more technically inclined Mac users I know have
downloaded and used FileTyper sooner or later because they were sick
and tired of other people's documents not opening in their own
preferred application.
The less technically inclined users of course ususally do not
understand FileTyper and the whole concept of type and creator code,
so the more technically inclined users often tend to create auto
typers for them (onto which they can drag and drop files to change
type and creator code).
With kind regards
Piers Uso Walter <email@hidden>
ilink Kommunikationssysteme GmbH
It would seem to me that we are talking about different things.
Certainly many Mac users feel the *effects* of type and creator codes
and find useful utilities for changing them, but I would argue that
such utilities never actually need to *show* the four bytes composing
the type or creator code to the user (and, thus the user never needs
to see them). With regards to creator codes, there is a one-to-one
relationship between applications and creator codes (with the
exception of irregular applications like applescript droplets and
applets). It would seem to me that any well designed creator-code
changing utility could present such changes in terms of changing the
*owning application* or *default application* without ever show the
actual four (possibly unprintable) bytes that compose creator codes.
With regards to type codes, I'm fairly sure that the mechanisms used
by Finder (specific resources in OS < 9 ("kind" ?, or maybe "BNDL"?)
and info.plist files in OS X) can be used by type changing utilities
to show users human readable "kind" strings (like those show in
Finder folder list views) as optional settings for the files. Other
resources may exist, such as Internet Config, the provide type
changing utilities the information they need to present human
readable options for types to the user. It seems that the actual
four bytes of the type code could be hidden from all but the most
advanced users of type changing utilities.
Neal.