Re: Can't open files with no extension in BBEdit ... again

In article <1130947651.632369.176930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"zit" <ttrtilley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Permissions didn't get changed much either.
> Not sure what people do in OS X to break their permissions.

What people do is run installers that change permissions on them. Some
of those installers even come from the OS vendor.

> Since the extensions were always visible, J. Random User knew
> them, and what they meant, and what they did.

But how does that help you if you've got a random file either with no
extension or with the wrong one. Sure I know what the extension "tar"
means, but how do I know that that's the extension that belongs on this
file that I've got that has no extension at all? That's the situation I
was talking about.

> > > I was and have been a Mac user since 1984.
> >
> > You got me there. I started in 1985.
> Fat Mac or a Plus?

Plus. I've since used older ones, but my earliest exposure of more than
5 minutes to the Mac was a Plus.

> > > I classify "owner+type" as a great idea that failed in practice.
> >
> > Because?
> 1. Hidden. Needed a 3rd party app just to see them.
> 2. Difficult to change. 3rd party apps again.
> 3. Broke the KISS rule. Too much complexity for too little gain.

I don't agree, but you probably expected that. I don't see the
difficulty in changing the file type as a significant problem because
the need to do so is too much of an edge case to bother with in most
circumstances. It's actually more problematic _to_ make it easy. Seeing
the raw file type wasn't necessarily meaningful anyway, since it was
just a 32-bit number that might not even be meaningfully printable.
Human-readable names for the types were easily available for most of the
life of pre-X Mac OS.


> > > Apple will likely keep them around but deprecate them.
> >
> > I suggest that your predictive skills are likely to need some honing.
> > Apple has deprecated the specific implementation of type specification
> > that they've been using all along, but has introduced a refined
> > implementation of the same concept.
> >
> Ah. I read about that a while back. Similar to MIME types.

Similar, but with an arbitrary number of levels of hierarchy.

G

--
Goal 2005: Convincing James Hetfield to cover the Strawberry Shortcake
"Are You Berry Berry Happy?" song.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: About File "types" and Office 12.1 Service Pack and double-clicking
    ... I'm sharing my observations not as an MVP but as someone who does technical support for a living. ... which means they don't want others taking advantage of that file type and allowing a malicious file to launch Word. ... Allow me to save/edit/open a word document with no extension, ... Although Apple deprecated file type and creator codes some time ago, they still haven't removed support for them. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: "Use this app to open all documents like this"
    ... Documents with this extension? ... If the document has a creator code, ... matching extension or file type. ... claimed ownership of that extension is used. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: Windows File Associations
    ... themselves with the appriate file extension, ... and a description of the file type. ... equate that gets replaced with double quote and all the Windows API ... LOCAL lResult AS LONG ...
    (comp.emulators.apple2)
  • Re: How to trim cell information
    ... To include filenames that might not include a type extension, ... Function reFilename(str As String) As String ... Dim re As Object ... I'm no expert on allowable file type extensions in Windows. ...
    (microsoft.public.excel.programming)
  • Re: Custom Files?
    ... > Private File Type, then I wouldn't worry about it. ... > Of course not registering it, may mean another app would start using it & ... But regarding the custom ... > | file extension? ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)