Re: Preview

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From: Luke Kanies
Subject: Re: Preview
Date: 23:23 on 31 Oct 2005
On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Daniel Pittman wrote:

> Bah.  This is exactly the same hate as it was when Apple used to store
> important metadata in their special little eight bytes somewhere other
> than the filename.

While I won't disagree with the technical truth of that, the previous system
had a kind of bias towards doing what you wanted and expected (i.e., if it
doesn't seem to work, try a few other things out).  I know that systems
relying on file extensions generally have a bias against helping the user
out, and I was afraid that Apple would acquire that bias.  Unfortunately, at
least some of their apps seem to have.

> At least you can /change/ the filename without having to find and
> install some sort of magic file blessing tool to alter those bytes into
> making your application identify them.
>
> Painful and stupid: not actually considering file content when you look
> to opening, or not opening, a file.

Yeah, this is the real problem.

> Painful and stupid: the idea that there is one, and only one, thing that
> is solely responsible for a file, and nothing should be able to change
> that.

The previous system was pretty good when it was developed, but it was
retained far too long.

> Not that any platform is substantially better at this.

BeOS's system was pretty sweet, and I just don't understand why people
haven't stolen it, or at least something like it.  Dammit.

-- 
We either are networking, or we areNT networking...
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com

There's stuff above here

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