Re: save file format

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden schemamania org>]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, "Ribeiro, Glauber" <Glauber Ribeiro experian com>
wrote:
> I personally think the compression default is good. We could make it
> clear to the user by displaying in the "save" dialog something like:
> "dia (gzipped xml) format".

Honestly, I don't know why anyone would be confused:

$ file Diagram1.dia
Diagram1.dia: gzip compressed data, from Unix

$ mv Diagram1.dia Diagram1.dia.gz; gunzip Diagram1.dia; file Diagram1.dia 
Diagram1.dia: XML document text

If file(1) knows the answer, why wouldn't anyone else?  I mean, it's
documented, and is consistent with the rest of Gnome Office.  Clearly,
knowing how Dia files are stored is much easier to discover than, say, the
whereabouts of certain evildoers.  

Someone using a unixy OS shouldn't persist in nonunixy thought patterns. 
Suffixes do not a file type make.  

I don't know if so-called file managers have file(1) intelligence built
in, but no matter.  Identifying the file type is not the application's
responsibility.  

In peace, 

--jkl