Re: Netscape 4.0 press release at their server

At 2:17p +0100 10/17/96, Dave Carter wrote:
>On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Scott E. Preece wrote:
>
>> Why, oh why, has our industry (with the notable exception of Apple) been
>> unable to figure out how to do typed files?
>>
>
>Wait a minute, I think you will find that Acorn RISCOS has a perfectly
>good system of file types. And they have a similar profile in my country
>to that which Apple has in yours.

Didn't Acorn decide to migrate to PowerPC's running MacOS?


At 10:27a -0500 10/17/96, Tom Magliery wrote:
>At 7:58 AM 10/17/96, Scott E. Preece wrote:
>>   From: mag@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery)
>>|
>>| "This page best viewed with" is an ironic step backwards in document
>>| interchangeability.  Before The Web, that information was given out using
>>| only 4 bytes of data, not 30 or 40.  And it appeared in the document's
>>| meta-information -- the filename -- not in the body of the document itself,
>>| so it was usually easier to get to.  ".DOC" was (and still is) quite a
>>| convenient way to say "This page best viewed with Microsoft Word."
>>---
>>
>>*wrong*  The .doc extension is also commonly used for Framemaker
>>documents and for Interleaf documents, at least.
>
>Well, okay, I didn't choose the best example.  I'm a native Mac user
>myself, and I didn't realize that .DOC was multiply-used.  My first thought
>was to use .WPD.

I'm a Mac user too. :-)

>>Why, oh why, has our industry (with the notable exception of Apple) been
>>unable to figure out how to do typed files?
>
>Maybe it's my own ignorance (remember, I'm a Mac user, so I'm on *your*
>side), but what's the difference between storing the information in a
>3-character extension + a mapping somewhere in the OS between extensions
>and applications, versus a 4-character "creator" field + a similar
>OS-internal mapping?

The difference is that Apple *registers* creator type (parent application)
and file type codes. This prevents Word/FrameMaker and similar conflicts.
Of course, another difference is that the 4-byte codes are *binary*,
resulting in 4 billion possible codes. I've even reserved a few for my own
MacOS programs! ;-)

BTW, is there *any* list, even an unofficial one, for PC filename extensions?
Anyone developing a custom MIME...er, IMT, format could use it...


-Walter

__________________________________________________________________________
    Walter Ian Kaye <boo@best.com>     Programmer - Excel, AppleScript,
          Mountain View, CA                         ProTERM, FoxPro, HTML
 http://www.natural-innovations.com/     Musician - Guitarist, Songwriter

Received on Friday, 18 October 1996 04:51:29 UTC