Re: what about /etc/magic? (was Call for file types for Nautilus)

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 09:29:08AM -0800, Darin Adler wrote:
> > In any case, how many mime lists do I need on my system?
> 
> The MIME list Seth is talking about is the single MIME list for GNOME.
OK, it sounded like nautilus was going to have its own list.  I retract
my complaint about multiple lists then.  I'm down to under 20 now :-)

> > What happened to /etc/magic as the single repository for file type
> > information, years ago?
> 
> I'm not familiar with /etc/magic.
It's /etc/share/magic on some systems.

> The MIME magic code in GNOME is (and has always been) based on the same file
> format as magic(5), but with MIME types rather than English text
> descriptions. It might be nice to merge the two mechanisms some day.

Yes, and since you have access to the source for file(1), not difficult.
Natural language descriptions for MIME types would also be useful.
For i18n purposes, maybe we should have magic.xml insted? :-)

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999