Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Ban the Cloud! (plus sugg. for Workbench) Message-ID: <44644@sun.uucp> Date: 8 Mar 88 20:15:24 GMT References: <318@jc3b21.UUCP> <1030@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> <43704@sun.uucp> <313@brambo.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.uucp Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 33 In article <313@brambo.UUCP> morgan@brambo.UUCP (Morgan W. Jones) writes: >In article <43704@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >> o Provide some level of file type identification. This can be as simple >> as IFF/Binary/Text/Unknown (2 bits) to something more sophisticated. > >Don't do that! I happen to think that the Unix approach is right. If >you want some way to determine what is what, adopt a convention of >.iff, .txt, .bin, .wp, etc. If people don't want to follow the >convention, or want to process a file as something other than what it >is, they can do so at their own risks. Workbench could even strip off >the suffixes. Well this is probably a religous issue so I won't stand on my soapbox to long :-). The type information, provided by the filesystem/application is a *hint* to workbench exactly like the silly extensions. They need not be mandatorily enforced like VMS, and when you don't know you set the type to "Unknown" and treat them like you do today. As far as an application is concerned it can ignore these bits and read them any way it wants. The four states above could be easily implemented by the programs that create the files, (IFF programs create IFF files, BLINK and compilers create 'binary' files, editors create 'text' files.) It is more like the way 'magic numbers' are treated in UNIX files. Only the data is out of band. >And it seems to me that if there is a default icon and someone takes a >snapshot of it, it should be made into a real icon. That is an excellent idea, I have added it to my list. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.