Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Subject: Re: file attributes In-Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM's message of 22 Jun 91 18: 44:50 GMT Message-ID: Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Organization: The World References: <1991Jun20.021749.12011@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1750@sranha.sra.co.jp> <1991Jun22.171528.9624@decuac.dec.com> <1991Jun22.184450.15172@convex.com> Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1991 21:31:55 GMT Lines: 34 The problem with most of these arguments is that they make the best the enemy of the good. Even the Mac often pops up that familiar "Application busy or missing" (something like that) error when you click a generic or unidentified file. So what? I agree that stricter adherence to the conventions of /etc/magic would do about 95% what these gui's need (add in file extensions and we get about 98%, particularly if we write off common cases like a plain text file just popping up whatever is in your EDITOR environment variable as a solved case.) If you don't want the default thing to happen then you have to know something, it's no worse than now. Actually, I'd be less interested in automatically launching the application than just being able to display reasonably accurate icons. Even sophisticated users look at directories scratching their heads mumbling a Letterman-esque "might be meat, might be cake...". The file command is critical, but it wouldn't be that awful to follow the low-resistance path of iconifying the file command. Anyhow, given the right design it could be made mostly harmless and optional, which is important. But, as I said in another note, there's more to file attributes than gui's, which is probably one of the weaker excuses to get into them. ACLs, compound documents, and other applications could benefit from a very simple implementation which effectively adds environment variables to files or something similar. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD