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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Text file madness: diagnosis & prescription.
Message-ID: <1990Jan7.172731.12580@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 7 Jan 90 17:27:31 GMT
References: <2706@aecom.yu.edu> <5900@ncar.ucar.edu> <1998@eric.mpr.ca> <5915@ncar.ucar.edu> <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Distribution: na
Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 37

As quoted from <9505@spool.cs.wisc.edu> by tonyrich@titanic.cs.wisc.edu (Anthony Rich):
+---------------
| In article <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> mls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon) writes:
| >The example of reading an arbitrary file is just that, an example of a
| >much larger general problem.  If I have a file I may want to use it in
| >a number of different ways, totally unconstrained by the file's origin
| >or by my intentions when I create the file.
| 
| Dangerous?)  The Mac associates a type with each file, "forcing" you to only
| feed files of the right type to a program prepared to handle it.  (Safer?
+---------------

No -- you can override it very easily:  select the application and the file
you want opened, then select "Open" from the File menu.  Of course, what
MacWrite will do when you tell it to open Suitcase II is open to question...
but then again, so is "cat /unix".

+---------------
| Mac programs tend to be large, "try to do it all" programs rather than
| small, single-purpose utilities.
+---------------

This is less a problem of file types than one of a lack of IPC... which Apple
is fixing in System 7.0.  Small, single-purpose utilities *demand* some form
of IPC, whether it be Unix pipes, VMS mailboxes, or etc.  A simple Mac
solution would be to allow any application to launch another application with
the option that a new clipboard should be created for use in communication
between those two applications.  File types do come into it -- but you have to
be able to get the data transferred between two applications before you can
worry about what they'll do with it.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery    allbery@NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi)
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