Re: file types

> It disturbs me that instead of a "file description" mailing list, it is
> already a "magic numbers" mailing list. We have discussed many different
> ways of having self-identifying files, and I think that the SGML, Bento and
> OLE mechanisms are equally valid, and perhaps already more widely used than
> magic numbers.

This is because we're trying to regularize and slightly improve on
engineering practice in the Unix world, rather than building a huge,
ambitious, theoretically wonderful object system that's so heavyweight
and tangled up with corporate marketing that no one will actually use it.
-- 
	<a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Received on Friday, 25 October 1996 21:37:04 UTC