DeMoN LaG wrote:
>
> Michael Gratton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED], on 24 Sep 2001:
>
> >
> >
> > DeMoN LaG wrote:
> > > [snip]
> >
> >> File associations mean I can have anything that ends in .mp3 be
> >> sent to Sonique to play.
> >
> >
> > Yep, but using file name extensions for storing file type metadata
> > is an extremely evil kluge.
> >
> > Have a read:
> > <http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metadata-1.html>
> >
> > Hopefully, more OS's will get it right in the future.
> >
>
> I don't doubt that there are better ways out there. However,
> considering someone said you can't just double click on something and
> have it open for you vs possibly having overlapping file formats is two
> different arguments. For what it's worth, I've been using a Windows OS
> for approx 8 years (from Win 3.x to Win 2k now), and I've never run into
> a problem with two different programs I own using the same extension for
> their files. Maybe in some weird environment this is a problem for some
> people, but I would say the vast majority of people will never encounter
> a problem of program A and program B both using the file extention
> ".xyz"
The reason that Windows went to using the file suffix to carry metadata
was because of a desire to eliminate any need for a powerful text shell
for the OS. That is, the dialog to get a file open in the correct
application is clumsy without command line interface if the file type is
not identified in file name. On the other hand, the strong file
associations create clumsyness in other applications. For example, I
create on a Windows system where I work plain text files with a bunch of
different suffixes. I can't use a .txt suffix for these files because of
name overlap (the text file name indicates data content and the suffix
indicates the exact format of the data). Dealing with this in Windows is
clumsy. I did consider simply moving the whole mess to Unix where the
clumsyness vanishes but current customer installed OS base makes that
impossible. Thus I suffer and the customers suffer. (They seem cheerful
in the face of it.)
Chuck
--
... The times have been,
That, when the brains were out,
the man would die. ... Macbeth
Chuck Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED]
