On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, you wrote: [snip] > This just highlights one of the weaknesses of the raw file system, one > that the macintosh tried to 'fix' by having a resource fork for each > file that describes what it is. > > I'm unsure which is worse. > > 1) A .XXX filename extension that is meant to describe what the file is, > but completely fails to indicate which applications can use it, or what > to do with it. (Windoze) > > 2) Nothing. (*NIX) > > The most reliable way to tell what a file is, is to use file(1) on it. > Even that messes up from time to time, and is intolerably slow on large > directories. > > It'd be nice if there was a mime type associated with every file.
That's the job of the file manager, not the OS. Konqueror has a few mime types defined. It uses the approach (1) above, ie .XXX And as Nick Rout pointed out, midnite commander has the mime types defined also. Yuri
