- From: Walter Ian Kaye <walter@natural-innovations.com>
- Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 01:25:54 -0700
- To: www-html@w3.org
At 6:48p -0700 10/18/96, David Perrell wrote:
>Walter Ian Kaye wrote:
>> >and how does this facilitate interoperability with other systems?
>>
>> Umm... it's standardized? You'll know that a file type of 'PNTG' is a
>> MacPaint file, regardless of what application created it. ...
>
>Who'll know? An NT machine won't know. And I won't know by looking at
>the filename on an FTP site if it doesn't have an extension.
Well you wouldn't know if it's worth downloading either! A filename could
say "Whistler's Mother", but Whistler might be a bovine creature for all
you know until you see the picture. Meta-information can't be fully
expressed in a filename, which is where technologies such as MCF come in.
See <http://mcf.research.apple.com/> for more info.
>I'm thankful "our industry (with the notable exception of Apple)" chose
>not to do typed files (and forking file systems). Every OPSYS with a
>central database of 'registered' file types? <shudder>
Kinda like every country in the world with its own rules. A world government
would be nice, but we ain't there yet. We know we'll be embarrassed when an
extraterrestrial asks to be taken to our leader, and we can't oblige...
__________________________________________________________________________
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 Saturday, 19 October 1996 05:45:30 UTC