Re: Saving an AudioFile without an extension
Re: Saving an AudioFile without an extension
- Subject: Re: Saving an AudioFile without an extension
- From: Herbie Robinson <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 17:28:46 -0400
1. You should remember that Apple's pundits don't pay your salary,
the users do. Some users are extremely ticked off at being forced to
use extensions when they don't want to. Apple is alienating a lot of
long time customers because of this (they say either "If I have to
learn to a new operating system, it might as well be Windows." or "OS
X is broken, I'll keep using OS 9"). There are still a number of
Apple only shops out there that very likely have established file
names as part of their operating procedures. Why punish them?
2. The rules you are quoting do NOT say "All files must have
extensions" and they also do NOT say "It is no longer necessary to
define file types and creators for your files." The idea is to
support both paradigms. For example,
a. Rule 6 shown below is "Applications should not append an
extension or change the show/hide setting of a file that does not
have an extension." This means that defining and setting the file
type and creator is as important as it ever was. Some applications
rewrite existing files by renaming; so, even following Apple's rules,
they will need to add a creator and file type for new files.
b. Many applications add extensions to the default file name
displayed in the save dialog, but will allow you to delete it. They
tend to be applications with a large customer base. This is, in
fact, consistent with rule 5. The choice of how to handle this case
is best done based on the user community.
3. Even if you force an extension onto every file you write, some
users will delete the extensions and still expect the files to behave
properly. If you don't provide the right file type and creator, this
will be your fault when the flames hit the bulletin boards.
There are many cases where forcing extensions onto a file just
doesn't make sense. For example, I have scripts in Filemaker that
export e-mail addresses from my contact database to Eudora. If it
suddenly started appending ".txt." to all those filenames, my scripts
would be broken.
And here's another example where extensions don't make any sense:
SDII files. SDII files bury all meta information in the resource
fork; so, there is no way they will ever be cleanly transportable
outside the Mac environment. Putting an extension on them just
confuses users ("It had the right extension, but my windows client
still couldn't read it." -- paraphrased from a daw-mac post).
Maybe, but have you read this ?
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Concepts/FileNameExtensions.html
Note especially this section:
"
To ensure platform interoperability and retain the Mac OS X user
experience, there are some basic guidelines you should follow to
support filename extensions:
* Make sure all of your document types have an associated
filename extension.
* Use the display name of a file whenever you display files in
your user interface. (See Getting Display Names in Your Code for
details.)
* Save dialogs should allow users to control whether to hide
filename extensions.
* Applications should preserve the existing show/hide setting
and filename extension when opening or saving a document.
* Applications should add an appropriate extension when saving a
new file or when saving an existing file using the Save As command.
* Applications should not append an extension or change the
show/hide setting of a file that does not have an extension.
* Applications should display an alert when the user tries to
save a file after typing a known, incorrect filename extension.
"
This makes it clear, IMO, that you should always suply the file
extension; the user has the choice whether to see it or not.
Richard Dobson
Herbie Robinson wrote:
I would like to know why you want to save a file without a file extension.
Probably because the user community demands it....
--
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