> > Konqueror has a few mime types defined. > > It uses the approach (1) above, ie .XXX > > NONONO!!!!! > > this is a job of the OS. > it should NOT be necessary for the filemanager to guess the correct type. > the type needs to be stored in an easy to access place, and it should
Well, it could be argued that it belongs somewhere in the filesystem, IFF one was desiging an OS from scratch. If the designers of Unix, back in the 60s, decided to implement such a filesystem, that would be fine. However they didn't, instead they choose the most flexible, assumption free option, everything is simply a file, which is basically a big string of bytes, there isn't even a difference between binary and text files, as far as the OS and filesystem goes. This was the best decision IMHO, as it gives individual apps the power to decide for themselves whether they can deal with a file or not. If any meta data needs to be supplied along with some data, this can either be in the same file, or another file, as the programmer prefers. If it was any other way, it would simply not be unix, and it would make things much more complicated. The silly resource fork nonsense, would have to be the main reason why I hate the mac. Kurt
